Road Trip
by Soul of Ashes
Summary: Chris must escort Jake through the Mojave to a secure BSAA facility while he recovers from a private ailment.
1. Chapter 1

Chris must escort Jake through the Mojave to a secure BSAA facility while he recovers from a private ailment.

—

_"Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,_  
_Prone to leave the God I love;_  
_Here's my heart, O take and seal it,_  
_Seal it for Thy courts above."_ —Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

**0m.**

He stands broodily examining the bag of clothes he carried from the airplane. Burn marks etched over his hands, elbows, fore arms. Tender and pink. Scabs and cuts. And the scar - slicing through the paleness of his cheek with pearlescent tissue, dead and unfeeling. He is sweating in the Mojave heat, in a white clean T-shirt, blue jeans, and boots. He's already coated in the dust of the desert, marked by the sand.

Chris packs in the bottled water and snacks, and spares him another glance. Jake doesn't know but Chris is aching. Piers is a fresh wound, and every time he looks at Jake he feels himself bleeding inside. "Get in," he ordered. "The sooner we get this show on the road, the better you'll feel."

Jake throws his bag in behind the bottled water. He climbs into the back seat and slams the door. His pale head bows at once, maintaining a wrathful silence.

It will be the longest 324 mile drive of Chris's life.

**5mi**

Jake puts his feet up on the front seat. Chris bites his lip and doesn't say anything.

**10mi**

Jake has dug through his bag, hunched over the back seat. He grabs a bottled water and what appears to be an iPod from his bag. He slouches in the back seat and listens to music until the battery dies because he forgot to charge it the night before.

**25mi.**

The empty water bottle is shoved between the seats. It crinkles every time Jake moves. The music is still playing and while he's looking out the window into the stretch of endless brown-grey, he follows a vulture suspended on an air current high above. Somehow it brings him nothing but sorrow.

Suddenly he swears under his breath before shoving the iPod and earbuds into his pocket. He glares at the roof of the jeep.

Chris arches a brow in the rear view mirror.

**27mi.**

"I have to piss."

"There's a gas station. Just a few miles."

"I ain't holding it. Pull over."

Chris is annoyed. A stop so early in the ride can only mean that there would be frequent stops. The jeep rolls to a halt and Jake climbs out. He does his business quickly, taking a moment to notice a beetle crawling beneath the sand. He returns. This time, he sits in the front and after they drive, he turns on the radio and changes the station.

**28mi**

Chris turns off the radio.

**28.1mi**

Jake turns the radio on.

**28.2mi**

Chris levels a long look at the young man seated in his passenger side.

He turns off the radio.

**28.3mi**

Jake turns it on and turns the volume up high. The jeep shudders and Chris slams on the breaks, turns off the radio, and snaps off the knob completely. He rolls down the window, letting in the cutting hot wind, and tosses it out the window. It rolls far, past the shoulder of the road, and under a prickly bush that he didn't know the species of.

He drives.

**28.4mi**

Jake scowls at the road ahead. He puts his feet up on the dashboard, and crosses his arms, leaning the seat back as far as it will go. The car is too silent, and for the next several miles he fidgets in his seat.

33mi

"Knock it off."

"What? I'm not doing anything."

"You're twitching over there. Do I need to pull over again?"

"Shut up and just drive."

**35mi**

"Get out your iPod."

"It's dead." Scowling.

"I have a car charger."

Chris fidgets with the power and volume control on the radio. Then he reaches into a mass of cords beneath the stereo and uncovers a cord that could connect the iPod to the stereo's speakers and to the car charger.

The radio works - the little stem of the radio knob still functions.

Jake takes the end of the cord dubiously, unplugs his earbuds from the iPod, and plugs it in to the jeep instead.

I need a sign to let me know you're here

Jake leans back again. He looks out the window and for the first time since he'd been with Sherry, he is beginning to smile a little.

45mi

Jake sleeps in the front seat, his head turned away and wobbling with every gentle bump in the road as Chris continues on. He's scrolling through Jake's music, turning it down low. Then he shuts it off for awhile to let it charge.

He's sure Jake is asleep for awhile. So he cries silently, squeezing the steering wheel. Looking away into the desert as if he's doing something shameful.

**51mi**

The gas station smells like candy, gasoline, bread and bathroom cleaner. He picks up a couple sodas and some sandwiches to put in the cooler in the back. Jake wakes up when Chris shuts the car door and begins off again with the tank topped off for the long haul.

Chris hands him a soda.

"You okay?"

Jake is sweating even with the AC on. "-Fine." He sips at the soda, glancing at Chris and finally looking at him.

Chris drives. His forearms are corded with a relaxed, easy tension, directing the Jeep with effortless, languid movements. Then the road again unravels ahead. But Chris is not watching the road because there's hardly any traffic. He meets Jake's gaze for a split second.

"Were you crying?"

He shakes his head.

Jake nurses at the soda bottle, then props it between his legs.

"Do you hate me?"

Chris sighs. "No, Jake."

"I'm not like him. No matter what you're thinking." He presses the soda to his forehead.

"I don't know what to think. When I look at you."

"Don't think then. That's easy for you, right?" It's a joke and yet he's being cruel in his seriousness. "Cut me some slack sometimes, all right?"

"I will if you do me the same favor."

"Fine." Jake keeps the soda on his forehead, and leans back in his seat again.

**55mi**

"So what was he like?"

Chris frowns.

"I mean, before. Y'know. If there was a Before Crazy."

"I don't know where to start."

"Pick something." Jake scrolled through songs. Everything from angry aniegreign death metal to piano concertos. He didn't play anything yet. His eyes unfocused, and he sat up suddenly.

"Pull over."

"Bathroom break again?"

"I'm gonna puke."

Startled, Chris stops. Jake leans out of the passenger side door and vomits - one hard gush of body-temperature water from his stomach - until he's dry-heaving. Chris sits helplessly, watching him. He reaches across the seat and rubs his back with hesitant, small circles.

"Is it too hot in here for you?"

Jake shuts the car door. Paler than death. "Just drive."

Chris drives.

**57mi**

"Are you gonna tell me what's wrong or what?"

"Nothing's wrong with me. Shut up. Drive."

"Hey. Fair trade. You want me to tell you about Wesker, but you won't tell me what the hell is up with you?"

Jake can't stop shaking. He rubs his hands together, rubs his arms. He fidgets in his seat. Chris thinks he's never looked so miserable, never seen someone so uncomfortable in their own skin.

But Albert Wesker's son doesn't say anything.

**58mi**

Chris detours off the beaten path. He calls someone important on his phone. They're staying overnight at a hotel. Jake is sick again before they reach the hotel.

He trembles all the way to the room and trembles to the bed and lies in bed shaking.

"It hurts," he says.

"Withdrawal," Chris says flatly, dropping their bags to the floor in the middle of the room.

Jake buries his face in the pillow and sobs.

It feels like a nightmare. First it's Jake on the bed, writhing and sweating. Then Jake in the bathroom, dry-heaving over a yellowed toilet bowl. Jake screaming and shoving Chris, raging at the entire world. He refuses to drink anything. He hates everything that touches his skin and fights Chris with thrown punches when he wrestles him to the bath tub.

When he touches the water he screams as if he's being murdered in cold blood.

"Everything's okay," Chris tells the lady who knocks on their door. "Thought he saw a scorpion."

* * *

Jake has soaked the sheets in sweat. Lying beside him, he feels like he's cooling off, naked limbs swaddled in sheets for some semblance of decency. Every wired cord of muscle is strung like bridge wire. The air in the room smells sickly but Chris holds on.

"I'm sorry."

"You didn't bring anything with you?"

Jake's teeth clench. A fresh shudder rakes through his nerves, assaults his bones. "I'm quitting."

"You could die going cold-turkey. You know that, right?" There's real alarm in Chris's voice. He doesn't dare move. Jake is holding onto his forearm like a lifeline.

Jake just squeezes his eyes shut and holds tightly. "I know."

* * *

Morning. Jake's breathing steadily in his ear and warm beside him, though there's an inch of space keeping them apart now. He doesn't mind this Jake. He closes his eyes, turning his back to him. He feels like Wesker, he thinks. Stabbed with nostalgia, followed rapidly by guilt.

Jake is showering. He smells the body wash he brought with him. He peels the sheets off the mattress, the cases off the pillows, listening for him. The bathroom door is open and suddenly, Chris turns to just look. To see if he's all right. He sees the curve of his back, roadmapped scars, tattoos, muscle. His breath catches. Not like Wesker at all.

Wesker was perfect.

He's not sure about how he feels about it. He rakes his hands through his hair, drawing in a breath.

He's eager to get out of the hotel and keep moving.

**65mi**

Jake's listening to music, in a clean shirt. He's sipping another bottled water and nibbling on the crackers Chris bought from the gas station.

"Feeling okay?"

Jake shook his head, lifting his eyes and watching Chris's profile. "I don't think I ever will."

Chris frowns at the road and chews his lip. "Listen. We can turn around. We don't have to go out here. We'll get you into rehab."

Jake leans toward him, his eyes hardening. "No. Hell, no."

**225mi**

They're driving through another little town now. As they slow down and obey traffic laws, they inch past a couple of teenage girls that look like college age women - smooth and dark-skinned and generous thighs glistening under matching a sheen of sweat - one blonde and two brunettes in light tank tops and all of them bearing bottled water and apparently immune to the noonday sun.

Jake is sweating again under the A/C but now Chris thinks it's because he's still sitting in direct sunlight. He is following Chris's eyes as they pass. They're lovely willowy creatures of the land of sand and heat. Jake watches the blonde, her hair unkempt and tied back in a mess of flaxxen locks. Natural blonde, bleached in the sun. He devours her with his eyes, shameless. Chris is more covert, shooting glances. Licking his lips.

Then they're chugging through the green light and around the corner when Chris mumbles, "Blondes."

"What?"

"He had a thing for blondes."

"Really?"

"Really." Chris leans his arm out the window, well on his way to a trucker's tan which would do well to remedy his pallor. "He loved women in general. But he was a fool for women with fair hair, great skin. Mile long legs."

"No kidding."

"Yep."

"I mean - well—" Jake waves his hand and then rubs his forehead, a frown creasing between his pale brows. "I didn't know he had time for screwin' around, y'know?"

"Do you?"

Jake snorts, crawling to the back seat for water, digging through the plastic of the 24 pack case for another bottle. "Fuck do you think?"

"Well, there you go."

Jake drops back into the front seat, uncaps the water and chugs it.

Silence for awhile. Jake sips water and smiles; he's thinking about Sherry.

Chris looks to the road and only bites his tongue. He's thinking about Jill Valentine.

**234mi**

Jake's turned on the radio again, because he's tired of listening to the same twenty seconds of every song on his iPod as he decides which one he hates the least. He lets fate control what they listen to and keeps it on a station that Chris doesn't frown at.

**235mi**

Jake starts singing to Perfect Situation, softly at first, when it comes onto the classic rock station. Chris joins in and then it's both of them, loudly (and badly) at the chorus, belting 'whoa whoa's' together with overwhelming enthusiasm and they are grinning like idiots.

240mi

"Okay. Sigourney Weaver?"

"Too butch."

"How 'bout the girl that plays— Kirsten Stewart, that's her name. Her?"

"I don't like her eyes." Chris makes a less-than-pleased expression, gestures at his face vaguely. "Too… close together, I think."

"Megan Fox."

"Bangable."

"All right, fair enough. Uhh… how 'bout people we know?"

Chris rolls a shoulder, but now he feels a little touchy. Treading in shark-infested waters. "I dunno."

"Come on. Don't tell me there isn't a single woman you know that you haven't wanted to drill through a mattress."

"Nah. That's more Leon's bag."

"This is between you and me, but he kind of strikes me as a whore."

"It's not as bad as you think," Chris says in defense, but adds shortly and quietly, "But yeah, he kind of is. Was."

"No, but really—" Jake has his feet up on the dashboard again. He's leaning back, the windows are rolled down, and they're talking loudly above the roar of the wind through the jeep. "There's nobody back there in a tight little uniform you've got your eyes on?"

Just the pair of them in the jeep. It's okay, Chris thinks, to talk about this kind of stuff. But it's uncomfortable to discuss personal topics with someone like Jake - there are complications beyond complications, the boy still utterly and fantastically enigmatic. He wishes he could get straight answers as easily from Jake as Jake connives them out of Chris.

"I don't really engage in—"

"Come on, Redfield. Nothin' to be ashamed of." His eyes, alert and predatory, drilling holes into the side of his face.

"I'm not like that."

"So you've got a girlfriend already?"

Chris swerves evasively from the question. "Off-and-on kind of thing. We're complicated." Your father made sure it was.

"What about guys?"

Chris swallows, and his expression sobers.

Jake's folded his hands behind his head, giving him a sidelong look, unreadable yet curious. "You've fucked with guys?"

"Listen, Jake. I'm all for trying to get along here, but the questions are startin' to get a little fucking ridiculous. Can you just drop it?"

Jake glowers. He doesn't want to admit defeat. But there's a quiet desperation haunting Chris's expression, lurking beneath rice-paper-thin anger. He wonders for a long time what Chris doesn't want him to know here. He wonders how Chris could swing from cheerfully discussing women to shutting him down completely, closing off.

His eyes narrow, then finally close again. "Fine. Roll up the windows, would you? It's fuckin' baking in here."

**275mi**

Busted tire. Jake is bemused that a multi-million dollar military company cannot afford vehicles with tires that could withstand a simple journey across a bit of desert. Or at least afford the tires for the job. Chris is livid. He glares at the offending wheel as they stand in the slanting sun, mesquite trees leaving long jagged shadows across the packed dry earth.

"Well, that's bullshit." Chris opens all the buttons on his shirt and takes it off. Underneath is the white T-shirt he slept in last night, holding Jake in the dark. Jake stands back and waits to help him. The jeep came with a replacement tire, tools to fix it at least. As if they expected the thing to bust, Jake thinks.

And then he's watching Chris. His shoulders are strong and broad. The way his uniform had been built around him, it seemed, when they first met - guns ablazing, adrenaline high, tempers scorching. He remembers him being strong-looking even then - and remembers that Chris was the one who killed his father. This fact does not hurt or upset him as much as it did then.

As his muscles stretch the fabric of the Tee, he thinks, this is the man who killed my old man and I can't bring myself to hate him.

A drop of sweat crawls from his temple and down Chris's jaw, a silent bead of diamond-bright moisture.

The bad wheel comes off. Chris grunts, rolling it away and leaning it against the jeep door as Jake turns to roll the good one over. They lift together, a moment of comraderie sparking between the pair as they settle it on. It does not go unnoticed. Then Chris is screwing on the bolts, affixing the new wheel patiently.

"I'm glad you're here," Chris says honestly, straightening as he wipes his brow with his forearm. He's soaked with sweat already. Jake crosses his arms, fingers picking at a burn scabbing over.

"You're the only one who is."

They push the broken wheel back into the trunk, reload all their food and drink items, and push on. The A/C gushes hot air until it cools again. Jake is miserable until it starts to cool him off.

"Don't say that," Chris says as he watches him from the corner of his eye. He's tossed his shirt into the back seat. A dark patch of sweat is forming against his chest. He reaches over, hand on Jake's shoulder. "What about Sherry?"

"She doesn't want anything to do with me. You think a girl like her would want anything to do with a drugged-out asshole like me? Not counting the fact that my father was a mass-murdering bioterrorist social reject." Jake drugs on his thighs, then shoots a look at Chris. "No one wants me. No one cares. You're the only one that does right now. In this whole world... you're the only one that gives a shit." Jake lets the words sink in, before he looks away. He's not sure where this is coming from at the moment. For now, he's just hot and miserable and he wants this miserable ride to just be over.

Then he can do whatever the fuck he wants when they have enough of his blood to make their miracle serum with. He's fidgeting once more, and for all different reasons - as if he could explode out of his own body and free himself of it, and everything that comes with being attached to it.

* * *

Chris hasn't spoken for a long time. He continues on ahead. Jake reclines, an arm across his eyes to shield it from the sun. Then slowly, Chris pulls over. He leaves the jeep on, the A/C on. He gets out, shuts the door hard, and leans against the car with his arms folded and staring into the Mojave with deep concentration. Jake rolls his head to stare at his back. Unbelievably, Chris isn't moving. Then, after what feels like a half an hour has gone by, of Chris just standing, staring, thinking, Jake feels the car shift as he opens the door and climbs back into the driver's seat.

Jake finds this behavior quite unsettling... but fascinating. He doesn't understand Chris anymore. In truth, they still barely know each other. He peers at him for awhile and Chris knows he's being watched. Somehow, it's fine for the both of them.

* * *

It's very sudden. Chris leans over, meaningfully, as if to speak. He keeps his hand on the wheel. But there he is, his breath fanning against his cheek, and lays a kiss there. It's very sudden... and Jake doesn't move, and in fact he's paralyzed with fear... and understanding.

Every tiny little thing makes sense in a way that Jake hasn't expected. He tilts toward the kiss, breathing shallowly, quickly. "Stop."

Chris pulls away suddenly. "Shit. I'm sorry. I thought-"

"No. Stop the car."

"Are you sick?"

"Just stop, moron."

Chris stops. They dip into the side of the road.

Jake reaches for Chris.

But he hesitates.

"It's him, isn't it?"

Chris says nothing. He thinks of Piers and he thinks of Jill and Wesker and all the men and women he's ever kissed like that and he doesn't want Jake to be hurt. And he doesn't want to get hurt either.

"Wesker."

They sit silently for awhile, suspended conversation in favor of letting each other know the quiet between them was not hostile.

"All I've got left of him is you." Chris massages the steering wheel till his knuckles are white and his veins pop along his arm, uncomfortable. He doesn't look at Jake... but he is yearning, aching. He thought he could forget it, put it aside, drown it. But Piers made him ache that way. Before that, Jill. Wesker. And now Jake, infuriatingly young and yet so hopeless. He tries again to lean over, touching his fingers to his scar. "You're all... that's left."

His lips meet no resistence at all. Jake tastes sweet beneath all his sour. He doesn't fight because he's curious and maybe he's known all along that the only man to kill his father should have been the one who loved him.

He lets Jake push him back. He needed that much - to control, to delve into unfamiliarity on his own terms. It's fine with him.

Endless fascination. Jake never considered men this way before. Chris's longing and aching, however, lures him in, exploring every muscle, every sinew, not letting his mouth escape. His face is scratchy - but deep, past his teeth, he's soft, melting. Not so different.

Chris moans when he touches his cheek.

Not a car on the road goes by.

Wesker's son pushes him into the reclining driver's seat.

Jake learns how to make Chris weep.

* * *

The road rolls by. Jake doesn't speak. He listens to his headphones, filling his head with sound, and leaving Chris with the fateful radio. Every sad love song seems to find its way onto the station and Chris growls under his breath.

He can still feel the teeth marks on his shoulder. Felt them throb and wondered if it was visible - that throbbing twinging pain.

Slowly, Jake pulls out one of the earbuds and says, without looking, "You okay?"

Chris blinks. "What, me? Oh. Yeah. Great."

"We're almost there."

"Yeah, just a few more miles."

Jake scrolls through the dozens of songs and bites his lip. "I'm scared," he admits quietly. "What if... if it's like China?"

Six months, staring at the white walls, doing nothing but learn Mandarin and miss Sherry - Sherry who wanted nothing to do with him once their hands shook good-bye and money had changed hands.

"It's not," Chris says sternly. "You're a free man here, Jake. They can't do anything to you if you don't want them to, got it?"

"Yeah," Jake agrees, but he doesn't believe. "You'll walk in with me, right?"

"I'll be right there."

Just like that, the potent male that had claimed Chris in the driver seat is gone and Jake is just a young man again. A child, even. His eyes look bruised and tired from his trial overnight. He's curling up in his seat now, trying to drown out the hammering of his heart with the loudest music he could find.

But only Chris's voice knifes through. "I'm not leaving you. No one's throwin' you to the sharks, Jake."

**324mi**

The facility is friendly at second glance. Local flora planted to outline the parking lots prettily, as if to spite of the tall chainlink fence with constantina wire framing the top. It was a single warehouse-sized facility, thousands of square footage, all neatly packed into offices, living space, laboratories for examination.

Chris Redfield is admitted for clearance. He had called ahead and confirmed his ETA, apologizing again for the lateness. Jake had been sicker than a dog last night and traveling was out of the question.

They are greeted by unfamiliar faces at the door. Jake carries his bag and stuck out his jaw, defiant and aloof. But chris knows and he won't tell. He's still scared, but months of hardened military experience have stripped all the boy away and left a calloused, tattooed exterior.

Chris walks in with him with his hand on his shoulder. He squeezes so hard, it hurts.

* * *

"Any allergies?"

"No."

"Any medication?"

"Nope."

"Are you or have you ever been sexually active within the past six months?"

A quirk of a smile. "Yeah."

A mark checked off.

"Have you ever used any drugs such as cocaine, methampetamines, or any other substance?"

The smirk fades quickly. He glanced to the two-way glass. Chris is watching through it, right there, but he can't feel his heat nearby.

"Be honest," Chris had said. "No matter what they ask you. It's not their job to judge you based on your answers, all right?"

"Yes."

Chris nods and smiles, and Jake looks down at the clean faux-wooden table, hating the cleanliness, the bright lights. He sweats underneath them.

Everything in here is made of plastic. Fake.

* * *

"You get your own room for awhile and everything." Chris does his best to smile reassuringly. "They'll help you get off your addiction, get you settled down. I know it's been rough."

Chris is being nice. So nice, in fact, Jake can't stand it. He turns and glares at him, anxiously throwing his bag to the comfortable twin-sized bed in the room. It's furnished like a hotel - very accomodating.

Still. To Jake it feels like a prison - a soft cushioned prison to keep undesirables.

"Is this where we hug and kiss and say good-bye? Tell each other we'll never be apart?" Jake spits venom.

"Don't be like that."

"What other way am I supposed to be?" Jake scornfully pushes the alarm clock toward the wall. The time isn't even set right. But at least there are windows. The desert stretches on ahead. "How long do you think they're gonna keep me in here, huh? I don't want to stay in this shithole forever."

"Jake, quit it!" Chris takes a breath, and lets it out. There's an angry young Wesker in the room, mouthy and nothing like the man with a temper like frostbite. "Remember what I said? I wasn't going anywhere." He gestures. "I'll be just down the hall for a few days. Your door isn't locked. You're not a prisoner. There's a kitchen where everyone goes for meals but there's no rule that says you can't eat up here."

"I can go wherever I want?"

"Wherever you want." Chris grins. "Wait'll you see the greenhouse."

* * *

It's a huge terrarium. There are birds everywhere. Jake stands beside a group of a dozen different huge, dripping flowers with the distinct scent of life and heat pressing in all around him. But it's cool in here, too. Huge leafy trees crane overhead, shading him. Ten steps further and he was already lost. There was green everywhere and the colors soft and easy on his sun-burnt eyes.

Chris hovers, watching Jake look around. The place is as alien to him as the desert had been, coming from a part of the world that was so gray and so cold most of the year. He loses himself in the greenage, too. He hasn't thought of Piers in a few hours, and he looks around, wondering what he would have said of this place. The air in here is so humid, so thick, it chokes him.

"Jake?"

His eyes have singled out one flower. He's standing over it, turning his wallet over in his hands. Everything in it that was important.

"Do you ever miss him?"

Chris stands closer. He doesn't know what the name of the flower is, but it's small and unbelievably blue. Ther were a lot of blues in Chris's life - most potent of which was the blue of the jeep. Blue of their BSAA symbol. Their uniforms.

Jake's eyes were not the same blue. Almost white, actually. He remembers seeing a picture of a woman on the cover of a National Geographic - her face had been covered all her life as a woman by a shawl, and the photographer had loved her eyes - her olive-toned face had been unspeakably lovely. But it had been her eyes, so vivid - not the same as Jake's but that's what Chris thinks of.

Jake's fingertips move close as if to touch the rare flower. He hesitates.

"Yeah. I do."

"Sometimes? All the time?" His tone demands clarity.

"All the time," Chris decides. He doesn't know why. But he needs to be honest too. "I miss him all the time. I wish... all the time... if things had been different. Maybe...If I'd been a better friend - I don't know."

Chris is bad at expressing himself. He realizes too late that he doesn't know what to make of Jake, or Wesker - or any of this. And he can still remember the way Jake tasted on his lips, the way his skin felt under his tongue in the jeep on the side of the road. His eyes follow the slope of the young man's shoulders as he bows his head.

Back in his room, Jake stretches out on the bed naked, because even as he shakes and trembles with cold, he hates the feeling of clothing on his skin. He feels nauseaous and miserable, knowing that Chris is only a few doors away. He rolls over, sweat pooling beneath him on the sheets. In an hour he tears off the sheets and lies on the bare mattress. He tries to sleep for three hours until he wakes up, vomiting mostly-digested dinner into the bathroom.

In the greenhouse.

Jake curls on the soft dirty floor in a pair of jeans and his boots, a pillow clutched beneath his arm. He can't stand the plastic indoor-smell.

He sleeps fitfully until the groundskeeper quietly tells him the sun is coming up and he should probably go to his own room.

* * *

He's put off his breakfast by an upset stomach. Chris plops down near him as he lounges in the far corner of the cafeteria - big presence, big appetite.

Jake yawns.

"I hear you didn't sleep so good last night," Chris says quietly, pushing with one finger an entire piece of bacon into his mouth.

"What's it to you?"

"The garden guy told me you slept in the greenhouse. Why did you want to go out there?"

"What the hell do you care?" Irritation flares. Jake bites his lip, fidgeting. He doesn't feel good. The smell of the bacon is making him sick.

"Sorry." Slowly, carefully, Chris pushes his plate farther from Jake. He leans forward, but not too close. Not afraid. Cautious. "Jake."

"I'm not hungry."

"Try some toast."

"I don't want toast."

"All right." Chris gives up for now. Even so, he nudges a piece of toasted bread at him on a napkin. "I'm gonna finish this. After, you wanna go for another walk?"

"I don't know..."

"Come on... Maybe it'll take your mind off of it."

Jake eyes Chris. As if to say, shut up before I break your teeth in. Don't talk about it in here.

"Fine. I'll meet you by the greenhouse. Place looks huge. I'm sure we haven't seen all of it."

"All right."

* * *

The greenhouse is huge. There's a cornucopia of green life in here. The early morning mist makes it cooler, easier to breathe. They walk - Chris having nothing more to do until later, when he has a debriefing to enjoy with the Mojava Department Director. One hand is stuffed in his pocket and the other swinging with each slow lazy step. Jake sweats in a shortsleeve gray Tee, but moves alongside him, looking at everything, drowning his senses, drowning the noise in his blood, pounding out some semblance of rebalanced homeostasis.

There's a clearing - secluded and quiet, hanging branches with flat broad leaves. Jake stops, drawing a deep breath. The toast settles in his belly.

"What's the matter?"

"Here."

"What?"

Jake turns and pulls his hand out of his pocket. He pulls him deeper into the flush dark green, dragging fingers through his hair. Chris quells the urge to resist, to speak reason. He doesn't understand. He doesn't think. He knows Jake is after something to fix him, fix whatever's wrong.

He's looking in his hair, in his lips, under his jaw where his pulse is beating so very fast. In the pores of his skin.

He can almost taste it in his sweat, tries suck it out of his tongue.

He looks for it in his jeans, finds it in the breathless moan Chris muffles in his shoulder. And there's more in the powerful swells of muscle in his thighs when he pushes Chris into the pungent loamy earth, rolling and squirming. Whatever It is, he finds even more in after he pulls away handfuls of clothing, stripping him down to the raw, devouring him to the quick.

It's the only thing Chris has that can make it stop.

They're aching and burning together now - but the real pain comes when Chris feels Jake shudder, hears him sob, buried somewhere between hope and despair, in the cavernous emptiness of his heart and the weak delirium that fucking spills into his bloodstream. It comes so close.

But it's the only thing that helps.

* * *

"Head up."

Chris chews the inside of his cheek as he watches them examine Jake further. The nurse checks the lymphs in Jake's throat.

"You've lost a lot of weight?"

"Yeah."

"You haven't been eating."

"Just nervous. Hate hospitals."

Jake's eyes are bruised with sleeplessness. His jaw is set, already lining up every perfect answer to dodge her pointed questions about his addiction.

"You're experiencing withdrawal," the doctor said patiently, taking the clipboard from the nurse as she bustled away. "If these symptoms persist, we have medications here to help you get through it without having to suffer them."

The BSAA was equipped to deal with all manner of medical ailments - self-inflicted or not. It is no wonder that Jake's secret could not be kept to himself. He presses his lips firmly together, shifting on the table, leaning back to watch Chris who stands silently in the corner of the room. He doesn't need to be there but he volunteered to hear the answers.

"Other than that... you're in perfectly good health. No long-term damage due to the substance abuse. You're good to go. I'd suggest staying here for a few days to relax." The doctor smiled. She had lovely large brown eyes, long auburn hair tied in a neat pony tail. A pen was stuck behind her ear, and her nametag said PhD. Frederica. "If you're feeling miserable, come back to the infirmiry and we'll let you borrow one of our day rooms with some medicine. I'm prescribing you some nausea pills to help you get some food down."

It's a temporary fix. But Jake is starving suddenly, and when Chris presses a hand over his shoulder and squeezes, it hurts but not too terribly.

As they wander away from the infirmery they take the long hallway with the large windows that face the garden. Jake yawns. "I'm starving. I think I wanna take a nap."

"Feel free. You can use my bed." Chris sways closer, and it's almost romantic when he slides his hand along his lower back, hesitantly. Jake leans a few centimeters closer.

It's only a matter of time before he needs it again.

Jake naps in Chris's room, not sweating, with a stomachful of stew. He's as still as a corpse and almost snoring. Chris leaves him be and heads out, pulling on his jacket, wincing when he rubs his neck. There's dark mark on his throat when he checks in the mirror.

"_Son of a bitch_."

(End of Chapter 1)


	2. Chapter 2

_**"The world of men is dreaming, it has gone mad in its sleep, and a snake is strangling it, but it can't wake up."**_ - David Herbert Lawrence

* * *

It's early and Jake is walking outside in the garden outside the compound. There's a deepening heat slowly boiling out of the desert as the run rises. Jake isn't wearing a jacket against the morning chill. He feels good. Better than he's had in days. His belly is full with a bagel he'd made for himself before coming out. He can still remember the feeling of Chris against his back before he'd slipped out of bed.

He's looking at the natural growth out here - lovingly cultivated by an underpaid gardener who clearly takes this job because of its remoteness. The flowers and cacti are gorgeous. He realizes he's been outside for quite awhile.

He quickly starts walking back to the garden entry doors when he runs into a woman.

A woman who sees his face, stares, mouth agape. Her blonde hair tied tightly back from her tanned face. Her eyes are cornflower blue while his are more of a polar diamond. She's dressed in a faded blue jogging suit, tight but comfortable.

Then she turns, slams the door behind her and runs down the hall without a word.

Jake drops his hand to his side, about ready to offer his name, and shake her own. Stung by a rejection he doesn't even understand.

"Who the hell was that?"

* * *

He hears voices in Chris's room, hushed yet raised. Jake leans close, head tilting toward the door.

"—didn't you tell me he was here—"

"I didn't know _you_ were going to be transferred here—"

"—and he looks so much like him, Chris, it's fucking uncanny, I wouldn't be surprised if he was just a clone!"

Jake withdraws quickly, although he feels every compulsion in the world to stay and listen. But there's movement. Chris throwing open a dresser, pulling on clothes. Jake turns and hurries back the way he came - wandering the humble BSAA complex until he finds an open yard in the back - a big grassy field.

He finds a sports shed and spends the rest of the morning hitting balls at the fence, finding solace in the force of the swing, the crack of the wood against the ball, the shudder and ruckus of chain links.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Chris says - with increasing regularity - at lunch. Jill Valentine pokes around her food, dressed in BSAA uniform now. Not that she's really a member. It's an honorary position, really. Until the government can figure out where to really put her without jailing her outright for the crimes she committed under Wesker's control.

Jake sits apart from them, on the other side of the table, cutting up his spinach and cheese manicotti into bleeding white logs.

"This is my old partner, Jill Valentine. Jill, this is Jake Muller." He politely neglects the title 'Wesker's son' in any connection, but it's obvious from what Jake has overheard that she knows that already. In fact, she is staring at him so hard that he's pretty sure she'll never him forget it either.

He hates her for some reason and he can't figure it out.

Maybe it's the way Chris is sitting so close and yet he refuses to touch her.

Her eyes bore into the side of his face, as if she could tear his scar open.

"Go ahead and say it, would you?" Jake drops the fork with an angry clatter. He glares at her. "Go ahead and say it to my face this time. You look like your dad. You look so much like him. Because he was such a great fucking guy, huh?" He stands up, the chair creaking, and this time he sprays the venom at Chris. "Next time, you mind telling me if your bitch is comin' around?"

Everyone flinches but Jake. He scoops up his fork because he's hungry anyway and he leans over to take a bite. Then he takes what's left of his plate and dumps it where the dirty plateware goes, on his warpath away from the table, out of the cafeteria.

"Jake—"

"Fuck you!"

Jill is red. She almost stands up. But Chris holds onto her wrist gently.

"I'm sorry," Chris says again meekly.

"Me too." Jill deflates, the anger gone out of her, replaced only by disappointment.

"He's just angry. He's going through a lot right now." Chris darts away from Jake's hidden problem. "Don't be mad at him. You said you basically saw him and ran in the opposite direction."

"I didn't mean to. I just— he looks—" Her fingers play at the collar of her jacket, above her heart. "I can see it all in his eyes."

"He's a good kid. I know it. Just give him some space." But Chris is doubtful. He's hoping that Jake is getting better. He hopes a lot of things. But the thing that hurts the most is the way he called Jill his bitch - and the undercurrent of jealousy that bled through as plain as blood through a bandage.

* * *

Toss. Swing. Crack.

Jake hits balls at the fence.

He feels like crying but it's easier to get pissed off, easier to be violent. Inconsolable jealousy. Unimaginable confusion.

"Jake."

He ignores Chris, standing with a can of chilled cola. He has a bucketful of baseballs and he plans to hit them all.

"Jake…"

"Do you fuck her?" Toss. Swing. Crack. The fence shivers in terror.

"Jake, this isn't about her."

"You didn't tell me you had a bimbo." He bends to pluck another ball from the bucket. Toss.

"You're overreacting. I'm not— this isn't…"

Swing.

The ball falls straight to the ground and rolls until it fetches up against Chris's boots. Jake glares at him, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow.

"You're a real nice fuckin' piece of work. You beg me to fuck you, I let you put your hands all over me, and there's this—" He exclaimed wordlessly, throwing the bat aside. "Some slut when your dick gets itchy?"

"It isn't like that anymore." Chris is almost beginning to yell back.

"Any-more?"

"It's not that I forget to mention her to hurt you, god dammit!"

"Then— what is this? What do you want from me that you can't get from bending her over, huh?"

"I—" Chris is furious because he can't come up with answers Jake wants to hear. He loves Jill. Has always loved Jill. He can't turn his back on her, no matter how many times Wesker has made her into something despicable. What he does he want?

Someone to absolve him of his failures?

Or is he fucking Jake Muller because he's a sad, greedy, desperate lonely human being grasping at fonder days? Does he want to see Wesker when he touches him, hear his voice when he says his name?

"I want whatever the hell it is that makes you happy. So I can give it to you. Because pissing you off is the last thing I want to do." His eyes narrow and he kicks the baseball aside lightly. He feels the heat's oppression. "I'll tell you everything you want to know. Ask me questions. Remember?"

Jake grits his teeth, jaw muscles bulging visibly behind his cheekbones. "You better promise to be honest with me."

"I've never lied to you, Jake. Not once. I haven't thought about Jill because I lost Piers, okay? And I didn't know she was going to be here. I honestly didn't know."

Jake huffs, shifting his weight, crossing his arms. Then he stalks past him, kicking aside the ball so it rolls over to rest alongside its abused compatriots against the fence.

* * *

"I can't speak for Jill, but I know that Wesker had captured her for a long time."

Jake splashes his face and dries it off in the bathroom when he stops and looks at him. "She was his captive?"

"Yeah. For a long time, we all thought she and Wesker had died." Chris sipped his luke-warm soda, looking out the window as he remembered. "They fell from a window… into the ocean. I thought I lost 'em both. She was trying to save my life and he was trying to kill me."

Jake slinks over to him. "And then… he brought her back to life somehow?"

"It was this stuff… called P30. She has a thing on her chest and it gave her regular injections. He controlled her that way. I don't know if it brought her back to life."

A distasteful face from Jake.

"It's gone now. Nothing left but scars. She told me later, she remembers everything that happened but she couldn't control herself - like some kind of bad dream. She remembers everything he said and told her. Everything he did to her and made her do."

Jake hangs his head. He looks down. The implications sicken him. He hates himself and he hates his father even more.

"I feel like a dick."

"It's not your fault. She saw you and she probably had a relapse. You're just lucky she didn't try to slug you one out of reflex."

"I have that kind of face, I guess," Jake mumbles, and it's bitter. "Just wonder why the hell he didn't leave any good memories behind so I didn't have to clean up house."

"It's not your fault. But if you want to talk to Jill to clear things up…" Chris lifts his hands, shrugging. "She's staying down the hall now too. If she's not there, then she's probably doing some of her therapy stuff."

Jake rubs the back of his neck. "I don't know. What if she tries to hit me this time?"

"She won't." Chris reaches over, squeezes his shoulder, and rubs the back of his neck slowly. "She said she was sorry - try apologizing to her."

—

She's blond, he notices for the second time. And he remembers what Chris said about Wesker and blonds when they passed those young women in town. It's a stupid thing to remember, but she's not an unattractive woman. He watches her.

She's motionless in a dimly lit room on a soft blue yoga mat. Her legs crossed and inverted, the bare soles of her feet directed upward. He shifts his weight, watches her breathe, the curve of her back in perfect posture. Incense uncoils blue threads of smoke to the ceiling.

"Jill?" He almost whispers.

She slouches slowly, sighing. It's an ugly kind of sound. _I was hoping you wouldn't come find me, _it said._ I was hoping you'd just disappear so I didn't have to look at you or talk to you or think about you ever again._

"Or I can go." Jake turns.

"No-wait. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about yelling and for running away." She gets up, crossing the room quickly without a sound. She wrings her hands together for a second, and they look at each other for awhile. She really looks at him this time, and carefully avoids staring at any one place for too long. Taking him in.

Jake stares at her and understands how Albert Wesker might have liked the look of her. She's strong, sturdy, athletic. Her shoulders are broader, her legs and arms toned. Beneath her shirt, he imagines her stomach is stomaching approaching a six-pack without being grotesque.

She's breathtaking and perfect. Quickly he looks away.

"I'm sorry for what happened to you." Jake feels a compelling desire to comfort her - a woman who probably is twice his age and no means interested in entertaining feelings of ambiguous camaraderie.

"It's fine. It was awhile ago. It still hurts… but look. You get on with it after awhile." She nods. Then she does something entirely unexpected - reaches up and brushes one delicate fingertip along his cheek. He can't feel it at all along his scar. "You know?"

"Yeah." He needs a breath and space to recover. His heart skips and thunders. "I know."

* * *

Chris, Jill and Jake eat dinner in Chris's room. They all sit around the TV with the volume on low and talk. It's something approaching levity between them, as if they are all still strangers and forcing themselves to know one another.

Jake tries to ignore the fact that Jill is leaning against Chris's leg, seated on the floor beside him as he reclines in the little scratchy armchair. And as many times as Chris tries to meet Jake's eyes, it never happens. As if there was anything he could communicate to make Jake feel more welcome.

Suddenly Chris slaps his thigh and leans forward. Jill jumps. "I have an idea. Why don't we all go for a drive? The three of us. Head into town. Get stupid on a few beers in the desert. I'm goin' stir-crazy in here already."

"That sounds great but… I'm not allowed to leave the premises." Jill chews on a fingernail, glancing around as if there were microphones in the walls.

"Really? You want to get us busted, Chris?" Jake grins, crumpling up his napkin. Agreeing and not really knowing why. But he agrees: this atmosphere is driving him insane. "I'm likin' this guy more and more. Come on. Let's go right now, man. Before the stores close."

* * *

It's a rushed haphazard attempt at stealth. In all honesty, it's idiotically easy to smuggle Jill Valentine out of the premisis. They pack a couple blankets and some snacks into Chris's car and drive out just past curfew. The gate guards arch a brow as Chris explains that he forgot to gas up the jeep before coming back with it on the way through - which is a lie. But no one looks as the gas gauge, and he jests about cabin fever before he's waved on through and advised politely to hurry on back.

He should be back before curfew is over.

Jake sits in the back so that Jill is hidden, squashed flat under his legs on the jeep floor. The guards don't even look.

Chris jumps back in, loads the back passenger seat with beer. He glances in the mirror and grins at Jake like a boy who just stole from the candy store. His dark eyes are bright - brighter than they've ever been and somehow, the danger element of this moment catches and Jake grins back a little. He reaches down and pats Jill on the head.

She groans at him. "Hurry up and get a move on, would you? I can't feel my ass cheek."

The jeep dips into the desert. Rebels without a cause, they delve into the overgrown scrub for firewood with care - there are tiny creatures in the sand that could easily kill Chris with one dose of venom. They reconvene in the clearing beside the jeep, and soon a low burning fire illuminates their faces. There's distance between them in the dark, amidst the wild.

Jake drinks down his beer fast before he stretches out the blanket on the sand. Jill sits beside Chris, huddled beneath her blanket, but he doesn't touch her. Yet the distance strains them.

Jake looks into the fire, then into Chris. The flames throw all the rugged planes of his face into deeper contrast, aging him. Yet this doesn't bother him. He likes his face. He likes the way Jill leans against him, because he knows what it's like. He knows how comforting Chris's strength can be.

He wishes he knew how to ask if it's okay. He didn't care before who Jill was, or what she thought, but now he wants her approval toward them. He wants her approval and he wants to know if Chris liked making love to her. If Wesker enjoyed her. He stretches out, alone on his side of their tiny fire, arms folding to make his pillow.

"Chris." Jill stirs, her statuesque posture shifting. "Jake…" Her eyes are warmer now. Sad and intense, and the men immediately focus their attention to her. Her blanket shifts aside and she spreads it out, looking toward Chris. Their eyes meet in a lengthy moment. She bites her lip. He seems to nod imperceptibly before scooting over and making room.

"It's cold." She watches Jake as she moves - Chris is already lying down behind her, smiling from behind Jill's curtain of hair, a shadow of a beast at rest beside her, her long-time guardian. "Come here." And there is she, the gentle seductress, the queenly presence.

Jake shifts, looking from one face to the other. Patient and kindly; dark and inviting. Then he lifts up, hands and knees in a crawl. A brisk wind stirs the flames and makes him shiver. Then her arms are around him, and it's easy to let her control him. He lies between them - Chris, powerful, familiar, hard, and Jill, soft and warm.

Her fingers touch his scar again, and her hair trails along his shoulder, and she feels him start trembling. "It's okay. Right, Chris?"

Entranced, Chris is very close. Watching. His hand settles against the younger man's hip and squeezes. "Yeah."

"It's cold out. Let me grab another blanket." And she does, standing up to fetch Jake's blanket before shaking out a bit of the sand. She shivers as she settles down - and between the two of them, Jill is probably the one most affected by the cold. Yet she takes one of the outside positions, curling up close to Jake - sandwiching the young son of Wesker between herself and Chris. In awhile, beneath the dimming coals, it becomes so warm that none of them seem to realize the chill.

The fire burns down, but it isn't truly dark when the lights go out. Jake doesn't know what to think. But the itch, the hunger is gone. For the first night in a long time, he knows true and liberating peace.

* * *

_The world is gray for miles. Gray forever. The sand is flat and formless and the rolling hills in the distance blur together. They're terrifying somehow - the visually jarring uninterrupted stretch intimidates his reason. He has no recollection of this place, but there are snatches of familiarity about it as if he's stood in a place like this before._

_Suddenly he's not there - as dreams often transport the dreamer someplace without telling them the how or why or when. He's in a house. It's his mother's house. He remembers the chipped paint on the ceiling above the stove where decades of moisture have gotten underneath the layers of ancient plaster. He remembers the color of the linoleum but it's different - details that are missing are simply replaced with others or incomprehensibly gone from his notice._

_The kitchen table is made of fold-out chairs. The table was either wooden or finished in cheap plastic wood. But he'll never forget her face. The rest of her outfit blurs together - gray like the desert - and she smiles that sad indulgent smile._

_"You'll get better at it," she says, and there's the piano, and hundreds of musical notes bunch together, blackening the page until there's nothing there._

_He sees his own face resolve from the milling notes._

_"The same crazy that runs in his veins, Jake?" The face smiles, features contorting hideously. The eyes are crimson. "Look at yourself. Do you think you're yourself forever?"_

_Jake tries to look down and it's hard to do but when he does, his hands aren't hands but grotesque throbbing fleshy nodules. Tentacles erupt from the flesh and he wakes up to the sound of screaming._

* * *

Jill is punching Chris as hard as she can in the arm, and the pair of them scramble out from underneath the blanket, while Jake groggily becomes aware that her sense of danger was very, very real.

Not two feet away, a rattlesnake is uncoiling itself, making that godawful noise that frightens most predators away.

But these three predators are idiots who slept out in the desert at night, and this unwanted bedfellow has crept in to steal their warmth.

"Shit!"

"Everyone stay calm." Jake counts the rows of pattern on its flesh to the end of its ugly little tail in the predawn light. "Just stay calm. It's still cold. A little sluggish."

But with a bite that can do some serious damage. He slowly sits up.

Chris wishes he had his knife. He'd cut its head off. Jill is just frozen, clutching at the edge of the blanket.

"Gimme that," Jake says.

She slowly pushes the blanket over, relinquishing it. He lifts up the edge and he watches the rattlesnake, its fat flat head and beady eyes pointing directly at him.

"Easy now, fella—"

The snake shrinks in on itself.

Jake tosses the blanket over it.

Then he stands up and backs away, dusting his hands off on his jeans. He stares at the squirming blanket, the awful rattling muffled.

"Now what the hell do we do with it?"

"Leave it alone. We can leave the blanket if you want. He'll get out eventually."

"I don't give a fuck what you idiots do. I'm getting in the jeep." Jill gathers up her hair, backing away before hurrying to the jeep. She shivers and sighs and glares at them as if it's their fault a poisonous creature has found its way up to them.

Chris chuckles, reaching over to roughly rub Jake's shorn head affectionately. "Good quick thinkin' there, tiger."

Jake grins a little but he stares at the blanket. Beneath it, a thing people fear.

He wonders why he's not afraid of venomous things and he keeps the dream to himself.

* * *

Smuggling Jill back into the compound is not as easy.

They're reprimanded for staying out past curfew but they reassure them that it was okay, they'd found a place to stay for the night. They later discover that Jill was free to come and go as she pleased. When they rendezvous in the cafeteria for breakfast, she punches Chris in the shoulder again and pushes him playfully, while Jake laughs.

"So much for our daring adventure. We coulda gone any time."

"Well, who cares? We still got out. Was kind of fun."

They sit around a table together. Jake eats a plate comprised mostly of bacon and waffles. Ravenously.

"Glad to see you're eating again. Is the medicine working?"

"I think so."

"What, was he sick or something?" Jill takes a bite of oatmeal. She tilts her head at Jake, brow furrowed with real concern.

Jake and Chris glance at each other and back at their plates. Jake answers after he swallows. "Had a bug, or something. That's all."

* * *

Jill sleeps in her own room a little further down the hall from their own. It feels like a dormitory now. That evening, Chris walks with Jake in the greenhouse again and he tries to learn the name of that blue flower he liked yesterday. But he can't find it again. He gets lost and finally he opts for just sitting on a bench along the path.

"Something's bugging you."

"I had a dream last night."

"I noticed."

Jake arches a brow and sighs.

"You were squirming. Not making any noise. You wanna talk about it?"

"It was just… screwed up. You know?" He picked at a bit of dirt in his boot. "You think I got a chance… at being… good? You know." He took a breath. "Chris, I've done some bad things."

"It's all right, Jake."

"No, it's not. Really bad things." Jake rubs at his face, eyes glittering, distraught. "I wanted to save her. And I couldn't. Now I got to save the world. So why do I still feel like shit?"

"It'll come to you, Jake." Chris bites his lip and sighs, watching the boy. He knows that he'll never quite grasp the depth of his turmoil. "Just relax. Think of this as time off."

"I just wanna go home."

"Why can't you?" Chris leans forward, thinks better of touching him. He's twitching with emotion and he needs to let it out.

"I don't know where the hell home _is_ anymore."

* * *

They study all the data Sherry Birkin brought with her on the 3 data storage devices. They perform more tests on Jake but most of them only involve a single needle stick. He sighs throughout it all, although eventually the question of his drug addiction comes up as they consider announcing that they were finished and he was free to do as he pleased and go where he wanted with the fifty thousand dollars sitting in his new American bank account.

Jake thinks about it too. He doesn't know where to go. He could literally live anywhere he wanted. He thinks about Alaska, even. Somewhere remote. No one to bother him. Cold; unreachable.

But he can't think of anywhere better to be as he lies next to Chris, lets Chris touch him, draw on his bare skin with his fingertips, breathe his air.

He can't think of anywhere else he'd much rather be.

* * *

_Moan. Fingers in his hair, teeth bared in the dark._

_"Don't go. Don't leave me—"_

_"I'm not going anywhere, Jake."_

* * *

Chris likes the way Jake comes. Just a little too hard, until it feels to him like it hurts. He cradles his face between his hands, watches his expressions, devours all the little panicked words he breathes. Then he kisses him soft, giving him space to breathe, but unable to keep away from the mouth that begs with Chris's name.

This is dangerous, he thinks. I can't keep doing this to him.

But he can't stop to think about that. Jake pulls back, breathing softer. His eyes meet with his, and he stares at Chris as if it's the first time he's seen him before in his life. He swallows, then turns his head away.

Chris sucks at his throat, softly, tenderly. He doesn't know what else to do for Jake but this… and that's okay for now.

[End of Chapter 2]

A/N: Hope this is all right. Been kind of bummed out lately.


	3. Chapter 3

_And if you go furious angels will bring you back to me_  
_ Will bring you back to me_

It's time to go soon. Jake has gained weight, eaten more, felt better than he has in a long time, and even now most of his cuts are fading to pale scars. Chris is spending more and more time with Jill Valentine. He tries to ignore that sinking feeling… focusing only on his ticket out of this building, trying to avoid the plastic fakeness of the rooms and go outside. He gets a little sun, stretching out shirtless beneath the sun. He comes inside to sleep off the heat.

He thinks about Chris.

As much as they've gotten close, he feels that time and his imminent departure is going to mean the end of something important. The end of Chris and Jake was coming, looming on the horizon like the hot winds of the desert when it rose like an exhalation from Hell.

* * *

Jake packs his bags - everything washed and pressed and straighened, orderly, neat - except the thick green army bag: a patchwork beast of places, names, identification and drilled units. He spread everything out on the bed: three pairs of pants, four T-shirts, five pairs of socks, five pairs of underwear, and the jacket which he would wear because they were going to drive overnight and take a plane back to Oregon. From there, he would figure out on his own where he'd have to go.

The bag looks patheticly empty and deflated even with all of his clothes rolled up tight and packed within. He used to have a need for so much more. And now he doesn't. He sits on his bed for awhile, watching whatever happens to be replaying again on the TV. He thinks about going outside and walking around the baseball field, but there's only bad feelings there. He thinks about the greenhouse, but walking alone would make the empty space beside him bigger.

"This is stupid," he says, getting up. "I'm acting like a lovesick moron." He rolls to his feet and walks out of his door, walking down and counting the doorknobs until he reaches Chris's room. The trip is as familiar as breathing.

He knows it's stupid that he hasn't slept well by himself since Jill came back, but he misses him and he needs to see him. He needs to think of something to say before he reaches the door. But nothing comes. Only the undeniable aching of something missed, an emptiness that yawned open wide to be filled.

He reaches the door, but a sound like bedsprings creaking halts him.

Repetitive.

His ears burn the longer he listens.

He waits for a sound to make him wrong.

A woman moans.

Jake backs away.

Jill.

And then the audio condemnation: Chris's voice, deep and private and all the right kind of personal, words muted into illicit nothing.

* * *

Chris waits outside, knowing Jake was going on his way back to Oregon today. For some reason, it's colder than it was last night. He waits, and finally Jake comes out, his coat zipped up and his bag shouldered. There's a storm darkening his eyes. There's another BSAA member walking with him - and instead of going to Chris's familiar company jeep, they walk past to a cozy sedan.

"Wait, what—"

"Jake requested another driver," the young man said, jerking his chin over at Jake. "Figured you didn't need the stress of another long drive to the airport."

Chris put all his effort into keeping the anger out of his voice. "Did he say anything else?"

"No, that was all."

Jake is almost at the new car, and he opens up the back seat and throws his bag in.

Chris jogs after him. "Hey… Muller. What the hell is going on?"

"Don't." Jake wheels on him, his finger pointing jerkily in his direction. "Don't talk to me. Don't fucking call me. Lose my number. Whatever. Fuck you." He sucked in a deep breath. "I'm done with you. All right?"

Chris, under normally circumstances, would have told him off, would have risen to the challenge. He didn't back down from anything - but this was uncannily sudden. Shredded apart by his words, his courage flutters away and he shrank. Guilt settles coldly like a stone. His heart thunders in his ears.

He says, "Is this about Jill?"

But Jake only gets into the car and slams the door and pulls out his iPod so he can listen to music. It's loud music. He can see his knee bouncing furiously through the passenger window.

"Thank you, sir. I'll take it from here." The new driver, who was good enough to do the job, steps toward the car and gets in. Chris plants his hands on his hips and watches the vehicle pull away and wheel away toward the gated fence.

Away.

Gone.

* * *

Chris walks as one condemned. Back to his room, where Jill is bundling herself with a sheet while she tries to figure out the thermostat.

"It's freezing in here— What the hell happened? I thought you were… Chris, what's the matter?"

The man has made up his mind - shoveling clothes into his suitcase and dragging his fingers roughly through his hair. He looks angry and frantic, panicked.

"I fucked up. I screwed up, Jill."

"Jake?" Jill only stares, uncomprehending. "Oh my god. You were sleeping—"

"Shut up! I have to fix it somehow… I have to."

He's turning over everything, looking for his keys. Then Jill gently grabs his arm, and firmly tells him, "Chris, you can't… you can't save Jake."

"I lost him!" He shrugged her off and paced to the window. The car is gone and Jake is gone. Going somewhere. And he'll never know where because it's his fault, his faulty heart bearing only love for everyone he cherishes, and his greedy desire to have them all.

The lost boy.

* * *

_"It hurts… it hurts…"_

_"I know it does. Just close your eyes. Feel that?"_

_"Please. Please make it stop."_

_"I'm trying."_

* * *

February 13th, 2013

_Beep._

"Sherry. It's me… Jake Muller. I just wanted to tell you— damn, I don't know— sorry. I just… wanted to let you know I was thinking of you. Maybe if you ever wonder about me. I'm sorry. Happy Valnetine's Day, anyway. Goodbye."

* * *

The snow melts under the unseasonably warm sun. The air feels sticky and cold all the same, and he steps over a puddle only to drench his boot in the slush beneath the layer of snow just ahead.

Chris calls.

Jake doesn't answer. He changes his number… but the government always knows what it becomes. Chris finds it out, but Jake doesn't know because Chris stops calling.

He misses the voice mail, wonders if he's disappeared from Chris's life with glacial slowness only to become nothing but meltwater. Clean and clear.

Not like Jake really was. Not at all.

His boot squelches as he follows the sidewalk up a New York street to his apartment - a quiet one-bedroom efficiency and no nosy neighbors. He keys the lock and slouches inside. He toes off his boots and throws his jacket on the floor before stepping toward the large crooked futon in the middle of the room.

He has money… but he has no food in his cupboards and no one to clean up for. His apartment is a mess. Everything smells sad and lonely. He searches his drawers and lifts a false-bottom in his dresser to find it.

He has one left. One for the road, before he leaves this shitty apartment behind. He's had to save and count and starve a little to get this trip together. But this one is for him and he doesn't care anymore, because no one else did or would. Not again. So he fills the needle and rolls up his sleeve.

The needle pierces the skin.

It's cold going in.

* * *

The music pulses and the lights are garish, but he focuses on the feast of skin. He hunks down behind a guy in a front seat. A beautiful dark-haired female descends upon him, devouring the man's attention, and Jake fingers the crumpled wad of money in his pocket but he doesn't bother. He watches as she twists her hips, her thighs yawning open, dipping and stretching.

He closes his eyes and turns, licking at the rim of his glass. Everything here is fake and plastic and he hates it. But he tries to enjoy the show, all the same - even as he doesn't care, he allows the animal part of his brain to function at least. Admires them in their lewdness. He gives the brunette twenty dollars. She almost stops dancing but she's too well-trained for these grain-fed hicks. She winks and smiles but he's already standing up to leave.

* * *

He folds himself up under the blanket and cries.

It comes close these days.

So close.

But not the same.

Not anymore.

_It hurts to come._

* * *

One afternoon in an Upstate New York outlet mall, a woman and child are waiting in line at a fast-food chain for something to eat. It's mid-February and there are hearts decorating every surface in every store, blood-colored. Pink like flesh.

The man behind them sweats, complaining of a headache to his girlfriend. She pats his arm and tells him he'll feel better after he has something to eat.

The cashier is a young girl with dyed black hair and thick piercings in her ears. The manager has told her to take out the one in her nose and she only obeys because she needs to get larger gauges for her ears, which costs money, and she doesn't want to lose her job.

The woman and child hug tighter together. The little girl has an envelope. On it is written the name Jeffrey - she is going to give it to him when she goes to school tomorrow. It's a special Hallmark card that her mum helped to pick out.

The line creeps slowly but steadily - the man sweating and sighing as he wipes his forehead and covers his mouth.

"Do you want a pie with that?" the pierced cashier asks the woman and child.

"Mommy, I want a pie."

"But we just bought chocolate at that kiosk. You can have your chocolate."

"Aww… No, but mom, that chocolate is for Jeffrey—"

"Can you please make up your mind? I think I'm—" The man begins, staggering. Then suddenly he tumbles completely sideways, mid-sentence, crashing into the queue vinyl rope. The little girl yelps; her mother scoops her up, and there's a fumbled chorus of 'Are you all right's and 'what the hell's the matter with that guy?' and 'Drunk.'

Concerned for her boyfriend, the woman stoops to help him up, but she's horrified by what she sees.

"Honey? Honey!"

He groans and rolls over. There's a collective sigh of relief.

"Hon, are you okay? I'm going to call an ambulance."

He grabs onto her arm, sits up, and bites her nose off.

* * *

The B.S.A.A. scrambles - Chris's Alpha Team being determined the best suited for the kind disaster unfolding. He departs from headquarters in Pennsylvania and arrives at the Upstate New York mall in full force. The whole area has been cordoned off by the time they arrive, local weekend militia and Army Reserves gathered, standing guard. Media swarmed like flies, buzzing with the news that an outbreak had occurred.

Chris's new team is very capable, the comaraderie high. They had their orders and they executed them without question. There was still that phantom of doubt for their Captain - infamous for routinely coming back from huge missions alone, his entire team wiped out. Gone.

"What happened?"

"There are three infected that we know of now. They're quarantined… and the girlfriend of the initial infected has already started showing signs." The information rattles off into the ear-piece, and the familiar voice brings him both warmth and a touch of shame.

Sherry continues. "All of the exits have been sealed off now, and the whole parking lot has been cordoned off, and no one is going in or out. You have orders not to shoot civilians unless you are under very high suspicions that they've been exposed. Basically… please don't hurt anyone you don't need to."

"All right, Birkin." Chris loaded his shotgun, and thought of Jake Muller…and the last thing he'd said about her.

_She does care about you… but she's scared of you. She's scared for you. And me… I was just…._

_…I was just pathetic._

* * *

"What the hell do you mean the airport's closed down?" a man in front of Jake wants to know. "I paid for this ticket weeks ago, and I had to wait because of this fucking weather, and not only that—"

"I'm sorry, but there's been an incident at the mall down the highway and there's a state of emergency been declared. No planes taking off. No one's going anywhere." The concierce is clearly flustered, and it shows all over his cheese-pale face. Jake shoulders his bag, scoffing. He's not altogether pleased either, but he's not going to be so vocal. But there's something wrong with the whole situation.

He turned his attention to the TV above the runway windows. A state of emergency had been declared…?

He waits and watches, keeping himself apart from the throng of impatient travelers. He doesn't care how he gets out of America at this point, but he can't shake the feeling that this whole day is about to get a whole lot worse.

At 7, one hour after their flight had been canceled, an announcement was given over the PA in an authoritative female voice: no one is to leave the building. The airport was on lockdown.

* * *

Intermittent alarms go off. Chris makes a sweep of the food court, although there is hardly a soul in sight. Many of the people who escaped were already watching the drama unfold from their homes or listening on the radio - or even sitting outside the roped-off parking lot, watching for someone they know to appear on the list of imagined casualties.

So far, the only one who has died is the woman. The girlfriend who'd had her nose bitten off. Not from blood loss but from transformation.

Chris lets out a long soft hiss as he turns, surveying the empty tables, abandoned meal trays, knocked over garbage can.

"Wait—" Sherry Birkin crackles over his earpiece. "Oh my god, Chris. They've targetted the airport!"

"What?" Chris barely manages to understand. "This was a distraction… God dammit. This is…"

"Bigger than we thought. Bravo Team is already en route."

Chris's cell phone rings. Jake's number burns into his retina.

"Looks like this place is already secure… I'll leave Marron in charge here."

"Hold on." Chris fumbles, presses the answer button.

"Jake."

"Chris."

Chris heard him clear his throat. "Jake, why—"

"I'm at the airport."

Sherry's voice over the headpiece. "Chris?"

"Hold on. You're at the airport. What the hell are you doing there?"

"Leaving the States."

Chris sighs. Then it hits him like so many bricks. "Fuck. That means they're after you."

"I know." Jake sucks in a breath. "They're already here. There's a guy, been watchin' him. He was on his phone." He pauses. "I think he's watching me too. Listen, I don't know what else the hell you're doing but you need to get here now. I can't rescue myself without some kinda heat, y'know."

"Bravo Team is already on its way."

Jake shifts, sliding his thumb over the hang-up button. "I don't know what to do, but I won't let 'em get their hands on me. Whoever they are."

"Why'd you call me?"

"I saw you on TV. The mall issue." Pause - loaded with heavy indecision. "I dunno. Figured you'd want to know that I was here. Come or don't come. I don't give a shit. I'm a big boy, I can take care of it. I'll figure something out."

"Jake… wait—"

* * *

Jake hangs up. He can't ignore the man any longer. And his ears, however loud the angry travelers were, couldn't ignore the sound of pounding feet… nor the unmistakable ta-ta-ta of gunfire. Closing in.

He feels adrenaline, dirty and thick with heroin, drench his bloodstream. He squares his jaw and stares at the poor concierge man as he tries to keep everyone calm. Emergency situations like this, there were precautions to take. Policies to follow. And there's the emergency exit, being blocked by a throng of people with luggage. His lips press together firmly before he takes matters into his own hands.

He grabs the man who has complained this entire time. He yanks him by his collar toward him, and jams his fist into his back.

"I've got a gun."

Attention is suddenly, irrevocably on Jake. The man gasps. "Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph."

"I'm gonna blow a hole through his kidney unless you assholes get the fuck out of the way and let e through that door right there." He shoves the man. "Come on, waitin' for a request in writing? Move."

The crowd disperses like a herd of frightened white-tail deer - leaping this way and that, scuttling, terrified, clutching baggage. He can see the whites of everyone's eyes. The man on his phone fades into the background, and Jake finds some pleasure in seeing that he is just as surprised as the tired middle-aged woman beside him as she brings her purse closer.

Jake drags the man in front of him, making sure no one sees that his hands are empty. "Out of the way. Step the hell back. And quit your fuckin' squirming." He tightened his grip, pulling his would-be hostage along until he's at the door. "Open it," he tells him.

The man fumbles with the mechanism.

"Pull the red thing first, moron. Hurry up."

The man sobs but he eventually complies, and the door outside to the runway opens - letting in all the cold air. His eyes watch the dark-haired man in the suit who had been eyeballing him since they'd arrived… then he shoves his captive in to the crowd and darts out into the cold. He takes the chance to glimpse back long enough to watch a group of armed terrorist barge into the waiting area, while the suited man points frantically to the emergency exit.

Jake sprints across the snow-packed runway for the baggage claim area. Weapons open fire and it's like Edonia, China, wartime, all over again, when bullets ping off the ground, sending plumes of white snow and ice around him. He slams into the baggage doors from the outside and hurls them open, ducking into the building again.

Now it's just a matter of finding a way out completely.

Whether or not Chris was coming.

* * *

Chris drives with as much speed as he can afford - foot stamped to the accellerator with little care to the people on the road - but there aren't many at this hour anyway. His destination is the airport and with him, he takes two of his Alpha Team members and leaves the rest to keep the mall secure.

His only thoughts are of Jake, and how foolish, how stubborn they have been. Still are.

"Chris, Jake is top priority. We can't let anything happen to him!"

Redfield presses his hand over the ear piece only to growl, "Why don't you let me take care of him now, Sherry? You might have given up on him as a human being but I sure as hell didn't. And I'm not about to." Then he shuts her off, her shocked gasp the last thing he hears.

He imagines she might have been angry. Even crying. Then he imagines that once upon a time he might have cared.

The airport is in chaos now - explosions, fires, a cacophony of alarms - and from the entry doors a half-dozen people stagger out, and all of them in varying degrees of mutation - and it stops his breath every time to see a cleanly pressed suit or a snugly dressed person juxtaposed with a face that was boiling with too-manys - too many eyes, too many ears, nostrils—

He leaps out of the armored jeep, levels his pistol and empties a clip into the victims. They crumble and twitch, and he feels a kind of strange hollowness when he realizes the sight doesn't bother him as much as it used to. The act doesn't phase him, gunning down creatures that look like only people from a distance.

He's seen all kinds of monsters… but the one he hasn't beaten still eludes him. The one he can't see, hear or touch.

All his demons are howling, too - but he'd made a career out of being louder than them. He reloads, flanked by the two BSAA soldiers.

"Our job is to locate Muller and remove him from the situation until Bravo Team arrives."

"We're right with you, Captain."

They move in.

* * *

Jake doesn't count on the main lobby to already be full up with militant-looking terrorists... but they lack the orderly focus of real militia. They shuffle about, holding their guns as if that alone makes them men to be feared. He peers through the plastic flaps, crouching on the baggage conveyer belt.

Everything about this smells wrong though. Someone knew I'd bought that ticket. Which means they knew I'd be coming here-

Someone is after my blood, and I don't know why. And he wouldn't get the answers by staring at these buffoons. The only problem is, they're standing between him and the best exit to the street and the parking lot.

Jake lifts himself slowly, counting seven men altogether. A ragtag group of hired guns, he's sure - he knows the type. Smells of desperation and hunger - starved heat, aching for money to fill their bellies with food, for a salve for their burning vices. Desperate for cash, eager to earn it, anxious of failure.

Dangerous combination. He singles out the most anxious of the bunch, then fishes a coin from his pocket. He rolls it out along the conveyer belt hard - it dances and bounces across the waxed marbled floor, tinks against the glass doors.

"Wha'wazzat?" the anxious one says, twitching at once to point his AK47 at the sound.

Jake explodes without a sound, closes the distance and tackles the inattentive one closest to him. He rolls, elbows his nose into his sinus cavity and wrestles the Smith&Wesson from his grasp. He regains his feet in a twist of movement, plugs the anxious one with the automatic weapon before he got trigger-happy, and dives behind cover.

It all happens quickly, but Jake is slow - slower than he realizes. He doesn't think about that, thinks only about the next movement. The next thing he'll do: shift, point, fire-

A jam - from poor maintenance, or what-have-you, but the gun's not firing, and they're closing the distance to him. He swears, ducking down, reevaluating his options.

The next enemy pours himself around the corner. He doesn't expect Jake, fists plowing into his solar plexus and ending his fight then and there. Pounding heart, guns firing, coarse words roared in English. They're not fighting a man, but a tiger, hunched low and fast as if he forgot how to move like a man. He is immortal and focused, precise explosive force detonating from his every muscle.

He doesn't stop until there's no one else coming for him - panting and strangely out of breath. His body aches, sweats. The heroin mixes bad with adrenaline and he staggers to the exit. He doesn't see it but he hears it. A soft 'pfft'.

Then he feels it - a slow burn, then wet and hot, spreading down his side.

-

Chris slams through the doors, peering down his iron sights without hesitation. Instincts are as drilled into his body as much as the dirt, blood, and sweat it had taken him to earn them. There are bodies on the floor - armed men, possible suspects involved. All dead.

His partners follow, assessing the situation. There were signs of struggle everywhere.

Chris drops into a defensive position near the baggage claim and thumbs open his cell phone. He navigates to history and calls the last number that reached him.

Ringtone. And somewhere in the far distant corner of the room, a song starts playing.

I need a sign-

Chris lets the phone ring, charging headlong for the source. His heart is in his throat as he rounds a corner toward the waiting area, finds Jake Muller with his back to the wall with his phone halfway out of his pocket. Their eyes lock.

Jake presses the hang up button and lets the phone drop into his lap. There's blood oozing through his cotton turtleneck sweatshirt, staining his blue jeans to black.

"You fucking idiot," Jake whispers.

Three men emerge from behind cover - more soldiers - and open fire at once. Chris doesn't hesitate for a second - throwing himself over Jake while his two partners engage the enemy. Chris bows his head, feels his skin slick and hot beneath his hand as he pushes him to the floor. The altercation ends quickly.

"Captain, we have to go!"

"Jake." Chris Redfield's voice isn't hard. It sounds slightly frail and surprised. Then he crouches down beside him, and reaches for him, stands him up and puts his arm over his shoulders and it's then he remembers Jake is almost as tall as Wesker and still taller than Chris.

"Move," he orders his partners as he bears Jake away from the fight.

"There's people. We can't leave them."

"My job's to get you out."

"Don't be thick, asshole. You'd never leave them if it wasn't me you were coming after. You'd leave me with these two pricks and go Rambo on anyone hurtin' those people in there."

Chris walks, carrying Jake, who feels strange and thin against his side. He can smell the iron heat of blood drenching every fiber of his shirt around the wound.

"Do you know how bad it is?"

"Just a flesh wound. Went right through." They hobble to the jeep and Chris watches as Bravo Team, via chopper, lands and begins their operation. He turns on his radio while Jake rolls onto his side, his breath steaming in the air. "shit - to think I forgot how bad it hurts-"

"Bravo Team. There are civilians possibly being held hostage. Safety is priority, understand?"

"If they're not dead by now," Jake growls under his breath, peeling his shirt up.

Chris shoots him a glare, dropping his hand from the ear piece. "You know, this was real stupid on your part."

"Oh yeah?"

Chris reaches for a field dressing kit from inside the armored jeep and pulls it open, arranging its contents next to him on the seat. His eyes are dark and angry, but his voice is level. "Leaving the country. Trying to get on a plane without telling anyone." He looks up, tearing off some gauze and dousing it with disinfectant. "Without telling me." His movements are angry, almost on the side of panicked. "And you get your stupid ass shot."

It's getting colder by the minute out in the air. Jake is shivering and sweating at the same time. "Fuck you. I didn't ask you to come."

"_You_ called _me_. Remember?"

"I-" Growling. Pain makes his face angry for a moment - Chris is magical, apparently, and is already gone from wiping him down to sewing up the tiny bullet wound.

"Quit cryin'. You're almost done already."

"Where'd you... learn how to do this?"

"Rebecca," Chris answers. "And it helps to have to practice all the time on your own men. It's good knowledge."

Suddenly Chris slows - his fingers grazing his skin, passing over a fresh patch of ink - something he doesn't remember, and instinctively his eyes are drawn to it. But then Bravo Team is rushing on by, and Sherry comes bursting through his radio earpiece.

"Chris, I've informed everyone that you're priority for the next few days is Jake's safety." Her voice is strangely tighter than usual, maintaining professionality. "Appointing you as his security until further notice."

* * *

Chris finds out that it means wherever Jake is staying, that's where Chris has to go - the long and short of it meaning he has to pack and overnight bag, pay his neighbor to feed his cat again. That also means that Jake is to stay by him at all times - and that means Jake has to come to his apartment and watch Chris pack.

At first, Jake resists.

"Bullshit. I don't need a goddamn babysitter!"

"Apparently, you do." Chris shoves away clothes, weapons, his badge, into a dark blue duffle. His eyes flash with lightning, glaring at the ungrateful little bastard. "I saved your life, Jake - whether you think it's worthless or not."

Jake makes an ugly noise, letting him glare, while he pretends to be interested in Chris's personal space - he sees furniture, nice furniture; a sad pile of dirty dishes in the sink, enough for one person; empty beer bottles; a bachelor's mess.

There's no Jill, no sign that she's been staying here. This seems significantly different now - as if he's been the first person in here since Chris himself.

Chris's movements slow, noticing Jake's quiet. He shoulders the bag, glaring. His lips are pursed.

"Jake..."

"I didn't _ask_ you to save me."

"You didn't have to." Chris crosses his arms. "But you shouldn't have to be afraid to ask."

"You didn't want me. That-" Jake gestures to wherever in the world Jill might be right now, but he clamps his teeth together, and hisses. Every movement hurts the stitches in his side. "Fuck you, Chris."

He turns his back, rubbing angrily at the back of his neck, up over the shaven red hair, shaking. Shaking because this feeling sucks, and he can't stand looking at Chris or letting him see that it hurts to do so.

He never tried to replace him. Never sought company elsewehere, only spent time among people when he had to and never brought anyone to his apartment. He's only ever had memories of Chris, of his coarse and his brashness, and then of the soft heat beneath, malleable and silk like he's never known him to be.

_We're still strangers, and you hurt me, and I hate you for making me want to forgive you._

* * *

_You're a dirty needle  
You're in my blood and there's no curin' me  
Yeah  
And I want to run, like the blood from a wound  
To place you can't see me  
'Cause love, like a blow to the head,  
Has left me stunned and I'm bleeding  
Yeah, I'm bleeding_


	4. Chapter 4

**_With the venomous kiss you gave me, I'm killing loneliness. Killing loneliness._**

_**With the warmth of your arms you saved me...**_

_**Oh I'm killing loneliness with you.**_  
_**The killing loneliness that turned my heart into a tomb.**_

_**I'm killing loneliness.**_

They've got no reason to be dishonest with each other, but as Chris follows Jake into his own apartment, it's obvious Jake doesn't want Chris here. He doesn't need the man who killed his father to see that he's been functioning at some lower level these past few months, working with a security firm, a clean slate, a new name, to pay the rent, feed his stomach, fill his arm. He hates the pile of dirty abandoned clothes right next to the door, as if he'd thought about dumping them and decided he didn't care. He despises the sound of his own faucet, still dripping in the sink, dirty dishes in the garbage - nothing he wanted to bring with him when he brought his ticket with him to the airport two days ago.

Dirty carpets. Stained linoleum. The cheapest efficiency he could afford. Chris takes one look around and then walks to the windows, looking outside. Jake drops his bag to the other side of the door, and stands in the dark, arms across his chest. His teeth grind, popping his jaw.

"Pretty nice, right?" Jake leers. "Got all the amenities. It even has running water I don't gotta boil."

Chris lets go of the shade, letting it flip closed. His whole stature is tight with displeasure. "We can get a room if you want." The offer sounds like a hollow attempt at chivalry, but it still sounds like he's insulting the place Jake is so used to calling almost home.

But it's never felt like_ home_ and nowhere really has. He feels most relaxed when he's traveling, going somewhere... but now, thanks to Chris - thanks to his father - he's trapped between four walls and a ceiling in a room with a man he hates. A man he craves with every fiber of his being.

Even now, he wishes he could let go of his hatred, his disappointment and hurt. But his heart's got its teeth sunken right in to that, like a lifeline, and if he lets go he'll fall all over again. He doesn't want to fall.

"I don't care." Resigned.

Chris stands for a minute, then mills toward the kitchen. Without asking, he finds a half-empty bottle of dish detergent (orange blossom citrus scented), rescues the dishes from the garbage, organizes the dishware, before scrubbing and then filling the sink.

Jake touches the bullet wound at his side, remembers the feel of Chris's hands in a vibrant moment of nostalgia and guilt, and goes to the sofa. He lowers himself onto it and pulls the dingy blanket over himself, waiting for sleep to take him.

* * *

He dreams about Jill Valentine; it doesn't take a lot of imagination, because without knowing it, he's memorized every feature of her face, every curve of her body by sight alone. He doesn't really know why, but he sees her, and there's an animalistic desire to possess her as a man should - to punish her for being the creature Chris desired more than Jake. He wants to cut her face, tear her hair, ruin her until she's too ugly, too bruised, too despicable, for even Chris Redfield to want.

He wakes up, drenched in sweat and hate for himself.

_Why can't I let him be happy?_

Morning light drizzles in through the blinds, illuminating Chris's shape on the floor, his army bag as a pillow, pistol on the floor beside him. His eyes flick open, and he stares across at him - from the floor to the couch where Jake is lying - and they stare at each other.

Chris looks wounded, and tired. He doesn't move, and perhaps doesn't know how to begin the day at all because he knows it's going to be difficult.

Looked at, Jake thinks, like I'm going to be the one to put him in his grave, and that I'll be the last thing he sees before his eyes go dark.

"I'm sorry." Chris rolls his head to look at the ceiling, and his broad chest rises and falls in slow motion - one deep long breath, before the inevitable plunge. "I'm sorry I hurt you."

"You're not," Jake says, suddenly. He stares at Chris's profile. Cleaner-shaven, softer. He's gained weight, he thinks. "You're not even close to being sorry."

* * *

Chris sweeps, vacuums, and scrubs the floors while Jake microwaves hot pockets. His arm itches, and his blood feels sour and thick in his own body, weighing him down. Jonesing for another fix. His side hurts, his stitches itch, and the fresh ink in his skin burns. The hot pockets cool on a plate - lumpy breaded indigestion in one convenient meal.

He eats half of it, and leaves the rest on the counter, ignored. He feels Chris against his back wherever he goes, his heat that fills the room, no matter where he stands. He feels his presence, gaze and his largeness compress the air around him, draw it in closer, and Jake wishes he could be one molecule hovering against his skin, breathed into him, beneath him, on top of him, again.

It drives him insane to want and also not want. It's the same addiction he feels for the needle, when he aches for its illusory joy. He pours himself a glass of vodka, ice cold from the freezer, and drinks - and Jake doesn't tell and Chris doesn't ask how he got the stuff in America under the age of twenty-one. He drinks and stares at Chris.

Jake doesn't have the excuse of going to work because he had given his two week's notice three weeks ago, and though he has money, it won't last forever.

His lips press together, and the heat in the booze doesn't begin to touch the cold in his skin. Doesn't even make a dent. He wears a longsleeve shirt and jeans and freezes slowly from the inside out.

* * *

"I'm taking a shower."

Chris nearly jumps. The TV is down low, and he's been listening closely. Occasionally he calls headquarters, dealing with business of his own, his voice low and familiar and grating all at once.

"Sure." There's the slightest frown, as if he wonders why Jake is sharing this news. He watches Jake vanish around the corner to the bathroom. Sees his reflection in the mirror as he peels off the shirt. His lips part, before he sucks in a breath and watches Jake inch the clothes around his body - narrow hip, length of spine radiating outward with wings of flexed muscle. Hands drop to the belt buckle, and as he works it, Chris notices his biceps pop and twitch and he sees the dark bruises in his elbows, the tracks on his forearms. And his blood runs cold, because he doesn't want to think that Jake has fallen into that again. That it was his fault if he did.

The bruises are dark, as if the Devil himself had gripped him tight there. Chris stands up, television forgotten, crossing the long distance.

"Jake-"

The mercenary looks up, trousers already unfastened and hanging open at his hips. He snarls, half of an angry outburst out of his mouth before Chris takes hold of his shoulders, pushing him back. He grabs an arm. "Jesus Christ, Jake."

Jake's eyes follow his gaze to his arms. His hand clenches into fists and he twists his arm to free it. "Fuck you. It's my life. They got my blood just like they wanted, but this body's mine, I do what the hell I want-"

"Where's the rest of it?" Chris demands suddenly, his voice hard and his eyes straying again and again down his ribcage where his muscles have thinned away to make him frail to the bruises on his arms. His lips thin and he suddenly can't breathe at any normal rate. "Where's the rest of that shit you use?"

Jake clenches his hands, and his jaw juts out in defiance. But he speaks the truth. "There's nothing else. Like I was gonna leave it behind in my apartment, or bring it with me on a plane! I'm not a moron. And it's your fault. If it weren't for you-"

"Don't you dare blame this one on me!" Chris roars, and he punches the wall so hard the medicine cabinet jumps and falls open and a sad collection of ibuprofen and painkillers tumbles out, spiralling in the sink. He advances on Jake, menace and authority. "Take some fucking responsibility for onc e in your life - you're not the goddamn victim here. And I spent all this time blaming myself for this, and everything else that's gone wrong, but when it comes down to people, it's their choice. But I can't let you make this one. It's a bad one, Jake."

Jake steps back, as if every word is a dart missile-guided toward his bubble with the threat to puncture. He can smell his sweat and cologne, and he's looming so close he could just lean his head foreward to lean it against his. Lover, the words scream. You're lovers.

He hates that he thought he meant so much.

"Like my father? When he left you, when he hurt Jill - your precious little whore - when he fucked her?" he says suddenly, decisively. His voice raises, seeing that has stopped Chris dead cold in his tracks. His lip curls, and he bites out the words. "Like Piers Nivans before you watched him die?"

It's the most horrible thing Chris has ever heard. Not darts, but fifty-caliber sniper rounds, combustible upon impact. The older man stops, hovering mid-step before he seems to deflate. His eyes are wet.

He shrinks. Devastated.

Jake has never felt more powerful in his life. Nor as miserable. But he's said it all and it's out now, making the air toxic with ugliness.

He averts his gaze in a moment of contrition. Chris backs him to the sink and he takes his face in his hands and he kisses him, angrily, but softer and softer as if he can't stand to stay mad and Jake makes a sound, an awful sound, and sags against the sink, pinned there.

"I hate you," Jake whispers/sobs against his gruff cheek.

Chris squeezes him, and it hurts his wound. But it feels good, absolving him only a little bit of his guilt. It feels better when Chris finds his lips against, and his tongue makes a quick invasion, tasting again, rubbing and soothing his aching as if the words he'd spoken must have hurt on the way out.

"I'm sorry," Chris says so low it's a growl. He pulls him from the sink, into his arms, his hands scorching on his lower back as he strokes his skin. "I'm sorry I hurt you, Jake. I'm sorry."

There's that noise again, and there's nothing more than longing in the young man's body as he presses close. And again and again, that rasped sobbing. He cries like a child, gulps of air and ugly noises. He hates himself. But Chris needs to love someone. He'll love Jake, flawed and broken and imperfect. He kisses his scar, holds him as he falls apart.

"It's going to hurt," he says, with a realization. "Oh god. All over again. So bad. Chris, I'm scared."

He wants to give it up. The addiction. The self-punishment. He wants to give it all up for something beautiful, something real. For Chris.

"Everything hurts eventually," Chris replies, his voice raw. He had no comfort for him other than the promise: "But I'm not leaving you alone with it. Just like last time. Remember? Right here. And I don't have to leave you. I won't."

* * *

Chris finds the bruises with his lips in the dark. They're tangled, rough-hewn statues of potential, still and quiet, in the moonlight. He lies between his legs and sucks at the crook of his arm and the sensation draws from somewhere deep inside Jake that hurts, and he moans with his head back, teeth white and bared. But it feels good - as if Chris is taking the Devil out of him, taking the burden unto himself. He hasn't been hard in over three weeks but he is now and the shape of him is pressing hard against his thigh. He's desperate to keep him right there, against his skin. Feeding the other addiction, filling that other ache. Replacing one pain with another.

And when he wraps his fingers around him and strokes, it's as if he can't remember how awful that betrayal when he heard Chris and Jill's coupling that day. He can't remember anything.

He hates Chris for making him want something so much. He loves him for giving it to him so readily, as if every stroke of his tongue was a handwritten apology. He's ready to come. He can feel it twitch and ache all through his abdomen.

"Tighter," he moans, and Chris feels the change. His whole body twists with his climax - lifting off the bed, lungs straining as he holds a breath for longer than he should. When he lets it out, he's almost sobbing. His fingers rake at Chris's hair, pushing him down, making him swallow. "Oh shit... Oh shit, oh shit-"

Chris gulps, taking it in, drinking his suffering and his need. It tastes sick and bitter all the way to the very back of his soul.

* * *

They're on the bed in Jake's apartment, lying close. Touching. Jake lies against him, the length of his body pressed inch to inch against his. His body responds with light shifts and tremors to the light brush of knuckles against his side, against his cheek. Chris wants nothing more tonight than this. Maybe every night. Just to feel his skin against his, to know he was there.

"You don't live with her," says Jake. "You fight with her?"

"About you. A lot."

"Why?"

"She said I couldn't save you. I shouldn't have to. So I asked her if I shouldn't have saved her, then." He paused. "It got ugly from there."  
Jake is silent. He doesn't like Jill. He doesn't hate her, either. But the heat of Chris's body soothes his emotions. He ignores the turmoil brweing whenever he imagines her body, her face. That imploring, sad gaze.

"Chris." He slid his fingers over his bicep, squeezed at his elbow. He rolls his hips to his and keeps him pinned. "You need to commit to me. I need you to do that for me. You said yourself, I'm all you've got left. I don't know what you meant by that..." He traced his lips along his jaw, and felt the shape of cock against his hip. His tongue tastes sweat under his jaw. Feels his pulse leap. His voice hums against his ear. Like Wesker's. "You were crying in the jeep that day."

Chris knows what day. He remembers the heat of the Mojave oppressively crushing in against the sides of the jeep, Jake beside him passed out in the passenger side. And god help him, Jake feels so good against his body at this moment, pursuing his lips until he breathes against them.

"What were you crying about?

"Piers," he answers, and the pain splits open, fresh and raw. "Piers Nivans. He died to save me... He died for the B.S.A.A."

Jake pauses. He buries his nose against his neck again, carves pale yellow furrows into his thighs with his fingertips. "And he saved you, right?"

"Yeah. Guess you could say that." Chris settles his hand against the back of his neck. "Jesus."

"You loved him, huh?"

"I loved him..."

"But you weren't ever together."

"I didn't want that with him."

Jake looks up, white-blue eyes slashing through the dark in a steep glance.

There are tears in Chris's eyes again as he massages his hand down Jake's back, pressing him into his skin. His whole body yearns just as badly as the male above him. He desperately wants to tell Jake how badly he'd like to come for him. His eyes close, languishing in that delicious feeling of want and molten desire.

"Don't lie."

"I didn't. He respected me. He believed in me, like no one else did. It mattered to him... what happened to me. You know," he sighs, shifting. "He was... a lot like me, you know. Integrity. Honor."

"Loyalty?" The accusation is there. Jake will not let him forget. And that's okay for now.

"He was better at that," Chris admits softly, looking away, "than me."

Jake's lips find his. Then his teeth, biting softly. Chris steals a breath, groaning, "Fuck me."

"Not yet." He pushes against him. "You're still not sorry."

* * *

It takes Chris two weeks to convince Jake to go to rehab.

He's followed him around in the streets, finding more heroin. He sweats at night, then he's moody all day until he takes it.

He didn't want to watch him at first. The act to him was despicable - but Jake demands he stay and watch him fill the needle. He stares at him with those intense eyes - the ones Wesker used on him to get his way, to command him on matters beyond his station.

He sees the needle go in and watches Jake fidget. The young man curls up afterward, and sleeps almost soundly. Chris doesn't know what to think about it. From the filthy sofa, Jake says softly, "I wish I didn't need it anymore." Unspoken: I wish I could be someone you want.

But Chris_ did_ want. He sat beside him, stroked his short bristly hair. As if he needed to prove his worth, Jake wraps his lips around him on the sofa, but Chris couldn't come. The sadness was too great.

It takes him two weeks to convince Jake. During those two weeks, nothing happens. No more attacks. Suspects were taken in and questioned concerning the attack, though, and as it turns out, a terrorist group interested in Jake's antibodies wanted to create a black market version of the Anti-C. He finds Jake listening to the news with only half an ear, as if he didn't honestly care anymore what these people wanted with him.

"You know what they did to me in China?" he says.

"What?" Although Chris is afraid to know.

"Everything," Jake answers. "So I'm not scared of much."

Yet as they sign Jake into a rehab in New York, Chris knows that he's not as good at lying as Wesker. He's terrified, and before they leave, Jake needs another needle.

For his nerves, he says.

* * *

"It's bad."

That's what they say. As if they lack the imagination to describe it any other way. As if there's any way to soften the truth.

"With this much use in the past... you could experience all the worst withdrawal symptoms. You could have hallucinations. Coma. You'll be hospitalized. There's only so much we can do for symptoms that severe."

And to top it all off, Chris would not be able to visit him except on very specific days. He would have to request visitation ahead of time, wait for it to get approved.

Chris stands up when the doctor leaves. Jake hasn't moved a muscle, though there was a twitch of muscle near his cheek. He feels as if he might never move again. He feels he could break. Chris goes to him.

"You'll make it through," Chris says confidently. "You've made it through worse." He lays a hand onto his shoulder, slowly, until Jake leans into him. He pulls him into his arms, and squeezes hard... and then harder until his bones hurt.

There's no ceremony. Chris leaves him, and Jake has to strip down and wear hospital clothing for the next projected three to twelve months. Besides the colored walls and the gentle paintings on the wall, the environment invites the same helplessness.

He trembles alone in his room, as they watch for his withdrawal symptoms. Feed him. They're kind though - handling his situation gently. They want him to feel at home... but no place does and especially not here. Jake thinks of Chris, sitting outside in the car, maybe. Sitting in the car and gripping the steering wheel and maybe Chris was crying. Crying for Jake.

Don't give up on me, old man. He closes his eyes and rolls himself up in his blanket. His whole body began to ache, his blood that familiar itch. He is scared and tries to tell himself he's not and fails. He thinks about Chris when he hugged him, and when he told him he was sorry.

There's a different kind of longing, child-like and purposeful and sincere, and it persists throughout the coming days - even the waking nightmares. A longing to see Chris when - if - he came out the other side of this horror.

The desert opens inside him - a great yawning dryness that ached for a breath of moisture. A drop of water. A gust of cool wind. When it became so unbearable, all he could do was lie in bed with his eyes peeled wide open, his body tossing and twisting in fits of agony, chills, and fever. Nurses came and did what they could to alleviate his suffering with whatever medication he can swallow and keep down.

When he dreams, he even sees the desert again - that yawning empty plain of gray that made his dream-eyes ache and his mind tremble in fear from losing itself there. The same as the night with Jill and Chris - watching the horizon quiver with imaginary heat.

Then he's not alone in this place. There's a silhouette. The man with the red eyes, the mirror shades, joins him. But it's his face behind the shades, and the same scar etched into his sallow hollow cheekbone. This doppelganger smiles, and lifts a hand to gesture. "You know you're not leaving this room, don't you?"

"Leave me alone."

"But you are."

"I'm not my father."

Somewhere he knows he's said that before, but out here in the desert it rings as an awful defense against the truth.

He's in the hospital room, talking at the walls. He looks to the left, toward the clock. Wesker smiles from the chair beside him, legs crossed, hands folded, as if he has always sat there. His shades are on the desk in the dim light - and those unearthly pupils pin Jake to his bed as he sweats and squirms. But his struggle grows still, whether by horror, fascination, resignation. His mouth feels like sand and tastes like vomit.

"I made you in my image, didn't I?"

The fire in his blood is too much for his brain. In the effort to grasp at some semblance of homeostasis, and to overcome hallucinations, he falls asleep and he doesn't want to wake up. He doesn't want to look at the doppelganger that is his father, or the father that looks like him. He doesn't want mirrors and he doesn't want to long for Chris, who can't visit. No visitors. He's at a critical point. He dreams of needles, and they go into guns like bullets and the guns they're all pointed at him. And the guns fire and the needles go through him, tearing out chunk after chunk of himself, filling him with dozens of ragged oozing holes. He runs from the great behemoth Ustanak until he's caught in his granite fist and with a giant spinning drill of an arm he's split in half, hot steaming white ropes of intestines falling and piling on the floor, and Jake's screaming and not dying. The pain is as real as anything he's ever felt.

He can't lift himself from the desert sand, wet with his own blood. It's hot and stifling, draining him dry... and when night falls, it freezes what is leftover.

I'm going to lie like this forever.

He thinks of Sherry. She thinks he's a filthy merc bastard. Nothing good can come from Jake Muller. Just a disappointment.

It hurts to feel worthless. Her opinion matters when it really shouldn't.

He thinks of noble and selfless Chris. The man who loves the boy. Wesker's boy. It brings comfort, and steadiness.

He's so far under, but he tries every eternity to reach up and grasp at wakefulness. Every thump in his temple beats out his name. Chris. Chris.

* * *

Chris works. But he devotes every second he can spare to checking on Jake. He's sick, they say all the time. Very sick. He's thrown furniture at people. Chris hears every excuse he can stomach. Today's not a good day. He's sleeping today. He can't stand it. But he has to be a good boy, though every instinct in him demands that he hurl down the doors of that rehab center and go to Jake.

But his mind always fumbles as to what he would do from there.

What he doesn't do: call Jill Valentine.

He gets an email every now and then. She's in Texas. She complains about the heat as if it is something to start an actual conversation. She complains a lot about other things. He closes the email and doesn't respond until he can think of something to discuss with her other than Jake and that's never.

It seems Jake occupies every thought. He sleeps alone because he doesn't want anyone else beside him anymore. He doesn't hunger for Jill's softness. Her last words to him haunt him at times. He doesn't worry about Jake's safety because there's at least twelve men guarding Jake through rehab in case there's another terrorist attack. He's protected American property now.

As he lies in bed, he tries to remember the way he feels. His scent. He has one of his pillows - pathetic, Chris - but it's nice to have something of Jake's to remind him of what he is looking forward to rather than the fear of everything he could lose.

That's all fine. Then he gets the call.

"He could be dying."

"Shit."

No.

"No." Then: "I'm taking the week off. I'm coming out there."

There's really no argument. Only a strange curiosity as to why the captain of BSAA Alpha Team is so interested. "Okay."

He doesn't remember half of the drive. It's almost as if he could make it with his eyes closed - and how many times was he turned away at the door because Jake wasn't 'okay' enough to be seen?

He decides he's not being turned away this time. No matter what they say. He grips the steering wheel tightly and sets his jaw, glaring at the road. He checks in, almost ready to tear off the glass between himself and the uppity woman behind it. Who works at a rehab center and gets to show off that much cleavage?

In moments - at least - he's approaching his door and in the room. The lights are down and Jake lies on the bed. He's been sleeping for four days, but to Jake how long must it have been?

He looks like a corpse. The similarities between father and son began to blur now that he was pale and hollowed out, a husk.

Chris finds his stomach has plunged somewhere down into his bladder. He speaks around the knot of agony in his throat. "Jake... I know this is hard-" He steps in, sits down at the edge of the bed, rubbing his thumb over the young man's forearm. "-But don't trade this in yet. I'm right here." _Come out of wherever you are in there. Let me keep you, at least._

_Let me love you._

Chris eats meals out of the rehab snack bar until he longs for even the simplest hot microwavable meal. He refuses to leave, and he uses his bear-like stature to intimidate the nurses into letting him stay.

He does that for two days, and at night he sleeps beside Jake in a reclining chair made of pain. But he doesn't complain. Tangles his fingers in Jake's, squeezing. He doesn't let himself cry although every moment leaves him straining against the need to burst. _Strong for Jake,_ he thinks.

He talks about all the new recruits he's been working on. Training them up to live up to Piers' example, and all that. Although they're flawed, he tries to bring out their best attributes to help them function well as a group as well as individuals.

He lingers on stupid details, to give his voice something to drone on about. He begins to wonder if Jake will wake up and make some comment. Something to make Chris feel like he's not talking to a ghost.

The miracle happens a little while later... and maybe all Jake needed was time, but the fingers he's holding suddenly squeeze. He almost stands right up - but instead he looks right at Jake, and waits for him.

"Tell me what you need."

Jake breathes deep, as if drawing the first breath in decades.

"Home."

* * *

On the road.

Jake's relaxed in the passenger side and this time, he's got his iPod plugged in, and music is playing softly through the car speakers.

"You okay?" Chris asks, and for the thousandth time.

Jake rolls his head toward him, nodding. His eyes are bruised with sickness but he feels a little better. "Yeah." The flickers of ghosts, the phantom of Wesker, still hovers beyond his sight. Teases him. But the voice is gone. Now only visions remain.

He doesn't tell Chris, hopes that guarded silence about his hallucinations will make them vanish quicker.

Except that maybe someday he'll speak up. He'll sit down and they'll drink together and not fight about something. Instead Jake will talk and he'll tell Chris everything that ever happened.

He watches the lights of night play against the planes of Chris's rugged face. His body hungers for things but only so very distantly. The addiction is gone, and the only thing he feels right now, even as he stares, is tired. Cored out.

"You can stay as long as you want."

"I know." He closes his eyes, curling his hand into a gentle fist. "Chris... why do you even want me over...?"

"There a reason why I shouldn't?"

Jake rolls him a look. Chris glances at him, frowns. Then he smiles with all the tragic sadness of the past few weeks. "You waited for me... knowing all this time, I'm just-"

"I need you."

It stops him cold. Then he curls up in the seat. "Don't."

"I'm not lying."

"I know you're not." Swallows. "I'm scared."

"You don't have to be scared with me. I know I was dishonest with you once before. And it killed me. It really did. But I'm being dead serious with you right now - I need you, Jake. I need to have you around. I want to help you. I don't want to lose you." It all boils over - earnest words tumbled out in a heap of whispered phrases that he's been thinking every night and day. Now they're out and floating in the air in the car like soft paper lanterns, glowing.

Jake sniffles. Then he smiles a little. "Okay then."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

And it _was_ okay.

* * *

It's easier when they reach Chris's generous apartment to relax, to breathe. The last time Jake had been there, he had spent all his time glaring at the man who lived there, feeling largely insulted and out of place. But the place is cleaner now. Filled with Chris's welcome and warmth, rather than a bachelor's loneliness and neglect. Chris takes off his light fall jacket and smiles when Jake toes off his boots. He looks filled out and better - his pain only shows now in his face.

He steps behind him, taking his jacket and removing it carefully. Jake still likes longsleeve shirts, but he knows even as Jake begins to step away and turn to him to smile a little, the devil's bruises are gone. His arms are pale, lean, muscled and clean, strong like they should be.

"Hungry?" Chris says. "I got steak."

"Sure."

"Anything else?"

"No. I'm good. I'm okay." He takes a breath again, and believes it. He walks to the sofa - a clean sofa, soft, the bottom not broken. He sinks into the cushion and feels his whole body devoured and cushioned by the comfort it provides. His head falls back and he legs his knees inch apart in a boyish manner. But only because his legs are too long to keep them comfortable any other way. His head falls back, and he listens to Chris as he talks about the steak from the kitchen - preparing it, the pan heating up, the sound of a knife cutting garlic and onion.

Jake didn't think he had been so hungry before in his life. But the scent began to fill the apartment and in rapid order, he felt his stomach clenching and unclenching with nauseating regularity at the prospect of being fed something soon. Chris lets the steak linger on the heat for awhile, coming out with a PBJ to tide him over for awhile.

"Smells good," Jake says, shifting as he chews the sandwich - the flavor and plainness of it fail to satisfy completely. But for now it's good enough.

Chris leans over. Jake instinctively tips his head back. And his lips are on his just temporarily. The older man's voice stays husky and gentle. "Are you okay?"

"Stop asking me that." Jake trembles but only out of cold. He gets cold very easily lately. "I'll be fine."

"You don t have to be scared. I know you're a little off right now. You ll be okay."

Jake nods. His eyes flutter shut.

"It's almost ready. Just relax. Okay?"

They sit at a tiny for-two table, two chairs, two plates, two sets of humble plain cutlery. Chris watches Jake eat without meaning to stare too much; the way he cuts his steak, the way he brings the fork to his mouth, chews. The way Jake tries not to appear ravenous. He decides he'll put this kind of food on the table for him as often as he can - vegetables, meat, grains. Everything Jake needs. Jake eats as if it's the first meal he's had in centuries. Maybe it was more accurate to say it's the first thing he's ever really tasted with all of his being.

He puts down his fork after a moment and meets his gaze.

His lips curl. "What?" he demands.

"Nothing. Just glad you like it."

Jake just nods. "Chris?"

"Yeah."

"I'm staying, right?"

"Of course. As long as you want."

"As long as I want?"

"Absolutely."

"I need a job again."

"That's all right. Take as long as you need. I know you're still reeling a bit. It s hard to get back into the swing of things."

Jake cuts another piece off the steak, as it bleeds into mashed potatoes. Slowly, he pushes it around. He sinks back in his chair, putting down the fork. He looks lost. "I just-I don't know why. I still don t understand."

"It doesn't have to make sense to you. When it does, I won't pressure you or make you feel like you have to make a decision. But Jake. Look." Chris wipes his mouth with the napkin. He leans forward, reaches past his plate and finds his hand as it lies numb on the table. His fingers spread over his knuckles and squeeze them, tenderly. His throat closes, and whatever it is he wants to say, it's hard to. It's the hardest thing.

It doesn't make it past his teeth but Jake turns his hand over slowly - palm to palm. His fingers brush the stony tendons beneath Chris's skin. He understands, just by watching his face and his Adam's apple dip hard down his throat.

Some things are hard to say with words.

"You wouldn't give up on me."

"No way in Hell would I give up like that."

"I thought about you. I swore I heard you talking. And I kept on hearing you." He shudders. Everything falls into place, neatly - the table, the kitchen, the steak, the mashed potatoes piled like little pale mountains with a tiny lake of gravy. Chris s face across from his, short dark hairs sprinkled across his jaw. Everything here has its own touch of dirtiness to it, its own flawed existence staring him unabashedly right back. Everything _real. _Painfully.

Jake's chair squeaks on the sticky tiled floor. He goes around the little table. He sinks to the floor in front of Chris and buries his face in his stomach, arms gripping him hard around his waist.

"It's not the same," he chokes, breathing deeply. "Oh god. What if- What it's not the same anymore?"

Jake clings. Chris runs his fingers through his hair - something he hasn't been able to do before. Jake's hair has grown out. No one has cut it. His strands are pale and gold-red, but not blond-white. Not like Wesker's. He finds the difference the most alluring thing about Jake.

"Take your time, okay? I know that I was kind of a replacement for that. But I didn't mind. And I don't mind if you still need me for it. Take all the time you need. Scared is fine."

"What if I can't-" Jake shudders. He's afraid of what happened to his own body, what might not work. He doesn't know. He hasn't bothered to look up anything.

"We'll find out, then." Chris tugs his hair gently. Jake s breath is hot and humid through his shirt. But he waits.

Jake needs time, so he'll have it.

* * *

Living with Chris is easy.

He only asks that Jake clean up after himself, and Jake does. It's not like he makes much mess to begin with. He's cleanly and orderly, it's almost eerie. It s almost as if he s afraid of leaving his mark on his personal space, though Chris encourages Jake to make himself at home wherever possible.

It s not really like Jake at all to be afraid of anything. The old Jake would have gladly taken up residence in Chris's home. He would have marked everything that he thought they ought to share. Maybe even criticized him, put his personal touches on anything Chris had already changed.

It's been four weeks and they have slept in the same bed but hadn't made love. The bed is huge, and with the two of them in it, it feels like a world unto itself - peopled by only two. They were all it needed. The utter lack of total intimacy doesn't seem to bother Chris - his hands find him in the dark, stroke bare skin, but it rarely builds to that fevered heat that so consumed Jake in the green house in Nevada.

Sometimes Chris will catch Jake looking into the distance. His gaze seeming flung far elsewhere - and he'll be very still, watching something, his jaw set, and he looks a little bit like Wesker and a little bit more like a lost boy in a nightmare. He's somewhere else, then... and every time, Chris calls his name so he can find his way back.

It's hard to leave him alone when he has to work. His job demands more hours. New trainees to break in. After a couple days, he invites Jake to watch, although company policy frowns upon an ex-foreign insurgent from observing covert tactics. Mostly Jake talks to the soldiers, and finds that not a one of them gives a rat's ass who his father was, or what he did. None of them really even know, since the information is classified. And none of them know that Jake was ever an addict to anything.

He feels almost ... welcome.

He inadvertently becomes the B.S.A.A. mascot - a scar-faced youth who watched in silence at first before he is standing up to shout encouragement during exercises. His fresh face, though scarred, is a welcome sight. The rough-and-tumble crew greet him like he's part of the family. He decides to join them every Tuesday for training.

Chris is glad that Jake is welcomed so readily. He decides that it was a good idea to bring him to work. He'll wait to ask if he'd like to join someday. He'll wait, maybe, instead for Jake to ask if it would be appropriate to join, and become a member. He likes the way Jake is smiling more and more. He knows how it is.

It feels good to belong somewhere.


End file.
